


if you come softly

by jilyandbambi



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Depression, Domestic Bliss, Episode: s01e08 I Will Remember You, F/M, Gen, Giles is Buffy's Dad, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Or as Close as Buffy and Angel are Going to Get to It, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Teen Pregnancy, and Not Just of the Romantic Kind, relationship drama
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-26
Updated: 2018-05-19
Packaged: 2018-12-20 00:58:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 48,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11909904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jilyandbambi/pseuds/jilyandbambi
Summary: In which, Adam fails before he ever gets a chance to get off the ground. Right around the time of the reveal of the suddenly not-so-mythical Slayer, giving Professor Walsh a very sinister Plan B. Meanwhile, our intrepid heroine is dealing with some serious developments of her own, to which everyone's favorite Friendly Neighborhood Vampire might hold some much-needed clues.





	1. The Physical

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WingletBlackbird](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WingletBlackbird/gifts), [FromDreamstoEmpires](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FromDreamstoEmpires/gifts).



> First of all, this fic would be nothing at all without WingletBlackbird, who not only beta'd this story, but gave me hours and hours and hours of on hand medical knowledge, without which, I could not have written this story. Thank you so much, WBB, I'm not being hyperbolic when I say I couldn't have written this story without you!!

It was a little over a half hour later when Dr. Stevens slipped back into the exam room he’d left Buffy waiting in; the combination Friendly Village Doctor/Geriatric Ken doll expression plastered over his face having intensified triple-fold in the mere thirty minutes he’d been gone, if that were even possible. Obviously that meant he had news for her: “Big” news. The kind of news that’s best to break with a smile, lest the receiver bolt before you can actually get to the bad part. 

Buffy wished he’d spare her and get on with it. Aside from the fact that she hated hospitals—and yes, she did count low-grade military infirmaries as hospitals—she already knew what he was going to tell her before his plastic mouth could even form the words. 

“Well now, Ms. Summers,” he began in what was probably supposed to be a grandfatherly voice as he plopped down onto a rolling stool and slid over to where she sat upright on the exam table.“The results of your blood work have just come back, and it looks as though congratulations are in order!” 

He shot her another plastic grin as he held out a sleeve of papers bound by a small paperclip. Undeterred when Buffy didn’t take them from him, he continued.  

“According to our results, you’re about twelve weeks along.” 

Buffy blew out a long breath of air through her nose and let her eyes drift shut. She’d been bracing herself for the moment of impact ever since Professor Walsh had requested she undergo a routine physical by the Initiative’s medical staff before being officially approved to join Riley’s squadron. And yet, hearing the truth from someone other than the pee stick she’d bought from the drugstore last month has sucked the air right out of her lungs. 

“Sounds about right,” she said faintly. 

Dr. Stevens’ face tried to turn sympathetic. “You don’t sound very surprised.” 

Buffy shrugged, too antsy with the need to end this conversation and get the hell out of this room to humor him even a little bit. “Have you already told Professor Walsh and Ri—I mean, Agent Finn.” 

Dr. Stevens gave what Buffy was sure was an unintentionally condescending smile. 

“Doctor-patient confidentiality exists even within the military, Ms. Summers,” he said, setting an uncomfortable hand on her shoulder. Buffy shook him off, but allowed herself to unclench at the spot of good news. 

“But I must advise you to be careful,” the doctor went on. “You’re about to enter your second trimester, and while that lessens the risk of miscarriage, even a girl in your uncanny physical shape is bound to experience sluggishness and increased fatigue as your pregnancy advances. Given the risks of the work the Initiative is involved in, it may be in your best interest to speak to the Director about tabling your plans to join Agent Finn’s team until after you give birth.” 

_He means well_ , Buffy reminded herself as she forcibly swallowed her scoff. Dr. Stevens had no way of knowing that even if she wanted to spend the next six months on bedrest, that’d be impossible. There was no rest for the weary Slayer. Even if she was denied the chance to fight alongside Riley and his commandos, a sabbatical was nowhere in the realm of being in the cards for her, forthcoming fifty pound weight gain or no. 

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she said genially as she hopped down off the table. “So…we’re good here, then? I’ll speak to Professor Walsh and you’ll keep mum about…well, you know, the whole Mum thing?” 

She settled a hand over her stomach, doing her best not to think about how try as she might—and that wasn’t very hard, admittedly—the words “pregnant” and “baby” haven’t been able to make it off her tongue since she found out about her condition. 

“Sure. But just one question, Ms. Summers,” Dr. Stevens said, setting another hand on her shoulder and body blocking her lest she shrug him off again. “And I don’t mean to pry, but, well, we’re sort of a big ‘ole family here down at HQ, real protective of one another, you know? So forgive me for asking, but, does um, Agent Finn know about the baby?” 

Buffy started. “Riley? No! No, Ril—Agent Finn doesn’t know. And it, um, I-we haven’t...” 

She swallowed and looked away from the doctor’s prying eyes. “I haven’t told him,” she murmured. “And he doesn’t need to know because this isn’t his child. He and I haven’t exactly been...in that way.” 

“Ah!” Dr. Stevens’ eyes widened in exaggerated surprise. He dragged a skittish hand through coiffed salt and pepper hair, his face reddening. “Oh, I see. Well, then, uh—Does-does the father know? And does he know about your…nighttime activities?”

Buffy looked down, hoping Dr. Stevens couldn’t see the blush burning its way across her own cheeks. 

There was the rub. If only there _was_ a father to tell, it would make this thing about two percent less mortifying. At least she could tell people then. At least then she would probably be able to say the words, _“I’m having a baby”_ without having to follow them up with _“…I think.”_

_I_ think _it’s a baby._

_It_ feels _like a baby._

_I’m not hearing thoughts or growing horns or spewing green puke, so it’s probably just a regular old human baby…_

_More than likely…_

_I hope…_

_A regular old human baby that just…showed up one day. Just showed up and decided I looked like I’d make a good Mommy…_

_Or nest…_

_Or ‘host’…_

But then again, if there actually was anything wiggy inside her, the Initiative probably would have found it when they were doing her blood work; and if they had, they’d be hauling her off to Room 101 (or wherever it is they take the demons they capture) to do a monster-ectemy. She’s still standing here, right? So it must be okay. The baby must be okay. 

“That’s good.” 

“Excuse me?”

Buffy started again. “Sorry,” she mumbled. “I was just…thinking…” 

“About the baby’s father?”

“No,” Buffy said flatly, hoping the doctor would take the cue to let the subject drop. 

“You never answered my question,” Dr. Stevens said firmly, plasticky smile finally starting to melt away from his face to reveal a more stern expression. 

Sheesh, who did Norman Rockwell think he was, about to go all 7 th Heaven on her? 

“Look, I appreciate the advice and the whole agreeing to play secret-keeper thing,” Buffy said letting just enough edge in her voice for him to get the point. “But this really isn’t any of your business. I think I should be going, if there’s nothing else.” 

Dr. Stevens bowed his head respectfully. “Of course, Ms. Summers.” He side stepped her to pick up the papers he’d tried to give her earlier from off the stool and handed them to her again. 

“I wrote you a ‘script for some prenatal vitamins, you should be able to pick them up from your regular pharmacy this evening.” 

She took them from him with a quiet “thank you,” as he led them both over to the door. Dr. Stevens gave her another uncomfortable pat on the shoulder before turning the knob and letting her out into the hallway. 

“You remember your way out, right?” 

“Yep, I’m good,” Buffy said, a little too perkily at the prospect of finally getting out of hospital-jail 

“Alrighty then,” Dr. Stevens smiled warily. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Ms. Summers. Good luck with everything.” 

“Thanks!” Buffy called over her shoulder as she began her fast walk down the not-at-all-creepy cement corridor leading out of the infirmary. 

_Well, that wasn’t all bad, nosy doctor notwithstanding._

She’d been afraid—so afraid when Professor Walsh had insisted she submit to a routine checkup prior to becoming an official member of the Initiative that it would bring everything crashing down. That the doctor would be required to tell her psych professor the results: Buffy Summers, five foot one, one hundred twenty pounds, three months pregnant, father unknown. Yeah, that would’ve gone over well with Walsh and Riley. 

And Riley…

It’s been a month and she still didn’t know what to tell him, or if she should tell him. They’d only been on a few dates, it wouldn’t kill him to lose out on a knocked up slut who couldn’t even remember who her baby-daddy was. Or if there even was one to begin with. 

Riley was a nice guy, but even he wouldn’t want to stick around for that. And wouldn’t it be simpler, kinder to just break things off before either of them got too attached, rather than having to drag him through the whole freak show? Not to mention, it’d be easier on her to have to explain this whole mess to one less person, having to tell Mom and Giles would be bad enough. 

Her whole body flushed hot at that last thought, at having to explain to the both of them (together? Separately?) that she was pregnant. 

Pregnant, with a baby who had no father. 

A baby, though. An actual baby. It had to be an actual, normal baby, otherwise Dr. Stevens and the lab guys would’ve picked up on it, right? 

Right?

_Hey you in there?_ Buffy whisper-thought, hunching over a little to look down at her stomach. _You probably look like a seamonkey right now, but you’re gonna come out looking like one of us, right? With a head, a mouth, two arms and two legs, ten fingers and toes. The whole perfect package, right?_

_Right…?_

_Kick once if you’re planning on eating your way out of my stomach at the five-month mark so at least I’ll be prepared._

Nothing. 

_I’m serious, kick me!_

Still nothing. Maybe its legs weren’t strong enough yet. Well, in any case...

_Okay then, I’m holding you to that. We’re in this together, Seamonkey. Especially if Mom takes this next newest revelation about my life the same way she took the last one._

Buffy grimaced, then, as the memory of that awful night almost two years ago briefly resurfaced. She paused for a second just as she reached the end of the hall, and bit her lip, her arms traveling down to rest at her lower abdomen and squeezing. 

_No one else besides you and me know you’re in there, Seamonkey. It really is just the two of us against the world for right now._

She stared down at her belly, more grateful than ever that it was still flat, for the time being, at least. Three months in and still flat. If she keeps up with slaying and skips Girl Scout cookie season, could she make it to four? Five? Six, and then blame everything that comes after on pizza and mochas? 

Or should she just get it over with now? Head home and catch Mom before she went to bed, and Xander before he went to his next shift, and Willow, if she wasn’t already with Tara, and Giles, if he even wanted to be bothered at all…Head home and hand Mom the results of her blood work and then look Giles in the eye and _swear_ _to him_ that she has no idea, none at all as to how this could have happened, and watch both of their faces go white. Watch Mom head for the bottle of scotch in the cabinet by the stove, and watch Giles’ mouth thin and his brow knit. No yelling, no shouting, but a tight, brittle, “Surely you must realize how irresponsible it was for you to not have come to me with this sooner, Buffy.” 

“Yeah, Buff, what were you thinkin’?” Xander would add. “You could have some kind of demon parasite festering in there, biding its time ‘til its ready to chew through your stomach and end the world!” 

“Buffy, we’re roommates,” would whimper a crestfallen Willow. “I’m your best friend. If you didn’t want your Mom or Giles to know, you could have told me. You, me, and Tara could have researched whatever’s wrong with you together.” 

“I know, I know,” Buffy heard herself choke aloud. Damn pregnancy hormones clogging up her throat and making her eyes burn with the false memory of the inevitable confrontation. 

_There’s nothing wrong with me._

She looked down at her belly, her arms tightening around her middle. 

_There’s nothing wrong with_ you _, either_. _Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing._

_Promise me you’re gonna make good on that whole not-gonna-kill-me in two months thing, Seamonkey. You give me that, and I’ll give you…_

_…something…_

_A Mom, I guess._

For the first time, the thought of that actually made Buffy smile, if only Just slightly. 

_You chose me, so you must be good with that. And if you’re not, you’ll have to be, because we’re all we’ve got,  Seamonkey._

The corners of her eyes still stinging, Buffy continued to rub at them with both hands as she rounded the corner and headed into the next brightly-lit corridor, and straight into someone’s...chest?

“Oh, I’m so sorry, I wasn’--” 

A tiny pinch, right at the base of her neck. 

And then nothing.

 


	2. The Vision

Okay, this whole thing has gotten way past old. 

And no, Cordelia is _not_ referring to the freaky, head-splitting visions Doyle and the Powers That Be have left her with, although let her state for the record that she is, in fact, way, _way_ over those. But she doesn’t mean the visions, this time she’s talking about the _other_ shooting pain between her eyes. The one she thought she’d left behind in Sunnydale. 

“Buffy…” 

A hand that’s not her own, clutching the back of her head. Another grasping her shoulder, shaking her. Great, her head is bursting open and whoever this is has decided to speed the process along. 

“…ffy? Did you say ‘Buffy,’ Cordelia?” 

Another shake and the world turns liquid, melting away like the clocks in a Dali painting. Friggin’ hell, could they at least get her off the floor?!

“Stoppit…” 

“Angel, uh, perhaps we ought to get Cordelia to a more comfortable location, let her clear her head a bit before we question her about who exactly she saw in her vision.” 

Three cheers for sweet chivalry. 

A clumsy apology and the hands on her head and shoulder go soft. Gentle. _Good_. She’s lifted then and laid down on something soft and cushiony. _Even better_. 

The world is still spinning and she spins with it, rolling over onto her stomach and squeezing her eyes shut. 

One, one thousand. Two, one thousand. Three, one thousand...

Of course it’s Buffy, the bleach blonde bane of her high school existence that’s done this to her. Of. Freaking. Course. What exactly has the Hellmouth’s favorite Apocalypse Maiden gone and done now? 

“Buffy…” 

She shouldn’t have said that. Angel’s back to hovering over her now, so close his breath is tickling her face.

_That’s not gonna get you your answer any faster, Blood Breath._

A hand settles on the back of her head. Large and cool, it makes quick work of the fire burning her brain down to the stem. 

_Ugh, but_ that _might..._

“Cordy, I’m sorry,” Angel said. “I didn’t mean to go all crazy guy on you like that back there. I just got caught up when I heard you say her name…” 

“Buffy,” Cordelia heard herself groan again. “Lab. Army men. Needles…” 

The hand on her head twitches—not enough to hurt—but enough to make her want to…There had to be more…There _was_ more, she knew it. What else…?

“…Baby…” 

Angel takes his hand back. Fine, her head’s all glued back together now, anyway. She can hear him and Wesley whispering to each other from the other side of the room. Too far away for her to hear. Who do they think they are?

Cordelia gritted her teeth and slowly pulled herself up to a sitting position, letting her head loll back against the wall the futon was propped against. 

“I think the lab might be underground,” she said loudly, breaking into Wesley and Angel’s little pow wow. “The walls were made of cement, and there were no windows as far as I could see.” 

“Underground, that’s something,” said Wesley. 

“But it still doesn’t tell us where she is,” Angel grunted. “Where-where, I mean. Geographically.” 

“Why don’t you start with Giles?” Cordelia groaned. Honestly, he always made everything so complicated. Wasn’t he supposed to be the detective here? 

There was a long pause. Cordelia’s eyes were still closed, but she didn’t need to see to see Wesley and Angel shrug at each other. 

“Not like we’ve got a better place to start,” said Wesley. 

Angel made an affirmative nose. Then, remembering something, turned his attention back to her. 

“Cordelia,” he said slowly. “You mentioned a baby?”

Cordelia blinked. “Oh yeah,” she groaned, as she slid back down to lay against the futon cushions. 

“Buffy’s pregnant. She hasn’t gotten fat yet, though, so maybe she’ll actually stand a chance against those commando goons.”


	3. The Catch Up

Joyce was absolutely beside herself and Rupert, for his part, wasn’t faring much better.

It had been five days. Five. Whole. Days since anyone had last seen Buffy. (Longer than that for Rupert, but if he wanted to be of any use right now, he can’t allow himself to dwell on the fact that it had taken him a full minute and a half to recall exactly when it was he’d last seen his Slayer— _former_ Slayer. The Wednesday before last, Buffy had come by to ask him a question about ice demons, but at the time, he’d been getting ready to head to the airport to drop off Olivia. He’d told Buffy to come and see him the next day if she still needed help and had promptly sent her on her way. When he hadn’t heard from her, he’d naturally assumed she’d managed to work whatever the situation was out on her own. According to Willow, that had indeed been the case. However…

_How can you be sure, pillock? You never followed through to confirm. What kind of a Watcher—_

A former one, that’s what, and Buffy understood that _;_ he’d been very clear…) 

Willow, of course, had been the last person to actually lay eyes on his Slayer; that had been this past Tuesday, the morning before class. After which, Buffy was to have met that dreadful Walsh woman for lunch. According to Riley—also present at Joyce’s to help them all piece together the mystery of his Slayer’s disappearance—Professor Walsh had requested the meeting in order to further discuss Buffy’s liaison position within her organization (which Rupert had more than a few reservations about, but as he was no longer Buffy’s Watcher, his protests only went so far). However, upon meeting with his superior later on that day to go over lesson plans, the young soldier had learnt from Walsh that Buffy had never shown up to the meeting. Thus, leaving them all at a dead end as to her possible whereabouts. 

And so, after three days of scouring the entire town for a trace of Buffy, employing every personal, professional, and mystical resource at their disposal,  here they all are--himself, Joyce, Willow, her friend Tara, Xander, Riley, and a soundly sleeping Spike--completely out of ideas and at their wit’s end. 

Rupert wanted to scream himself hoarse. He wanted to shatter the glass of water in his hand and shove the jagged bits down Spike’s bloody blood-guzzling throat. But alas, that couldn't be his role here. There _was_ an answer to be found in all this confusion and worry; some stone that had somehow gone unturned, and if Rupert expected to have any hope at all of finding it, he had to remain calm. If nothing else then for Joyce and Willow’s sakes, the most visibly distressed members of their little search party. 

As if on cue, Rupert felt the cushion in the space next to him on the sofa shift, as Joyce once again began to fidget in another vain attempt at containing her anxiety. In response, Rupert’s arm returned to its place around her shoulders, bringing her over to lean into his half-embrace. Her body went lax against his as she released a dry sob disguised as an exhale so as not to alarm the children. Luckily for them, none but Riley--ever the vigilant soldier--appeared to take notice. The others were too wrapped up in their own mounting concern for Buffy to pay any mind to much else happening around them. Numbed by the dulcet tones of the heavy silence thickening the room, occasionally accompanied by a choked gasp from Willow or Joyce, Rupert gave Joyce’s shoulder a squeeze, and then he, too began to drift. 

There had to be something. Some kind of mystical convergence or overlooked prophecy or annual demonic ritual he must have missed in all his harried research. Buffy wouldn't run off on them a second time. She wouldn't, but had the distance really grown so far between them that she felt she couldn't come to him for help with whatever new “Big Bad” had made it onto her radar? Or did she simply not have time? If Rupert had been more actively involved in Buffy’s life than he’d been previously, would he have at least been there to face down the unseen threat right alongside her?

_This never would have happened had she still been checking in with you every night after patrol._

_That settles it. If we get her back, that's the first thing that's going to change around here, no buts! And we’ll resume our training! Immediately. And she'll have_ nothing _to do with that dreadful Walsh woman!_

Rupert mentally smacked himself. _When, not ‘if’._ When. 

_When… when…_

It was too late. Before he could stop them, a sudden barrage of unbidden images began to assault his mind: Picked over corpses; a decapitated head sewn onto a golden retriever's body; a thirteen year old girl nailed to St. Peter’s cross, her bloodied mouth frozen in a twisted grimace of pain and horror; the roasted body of a seventeen year old found by her Watcher just three weeks after she’d been Called; the strangled, bludgeoned, half-eaten corpses of the scores of girls who hadn’t survived their Cruciamentums. 

No. 

Not if, when. _When_. _When_ Rupert found her, things would be different. Or rather, they’d go back to the way they’d been. Just as soon as they found her, he would-- 

If only they had a lead to go on, blast it all! 

“Anyone tried calling Angel?” Xander suggested out of the blue, the boy’s ever-persistent obtuseness jerking Rupert out of his mental self-flagellation, much to his irritation. “Maybe she’s gone to L.A. to see him again and forgot to tell someone...” 

But then again...

“Buffy wouldn’t do that,” said Willow, quick to come to her friend’s defense. “She wouldn’t just split without saying anything…” 

She trailed off awkwardly; she, Xander, Joyce, and Rupert all gave one another the same startled look as the painful, long-dead ghost of Buffy’s last disappearing act reared its unwanted head. Rupert could feel the same mutinous thought slip its way into each of their minds one by one as they each shot one another the same, split-second “what if” glance, before all four sets of eyes scattered to different corners of the room, ashamed. 

“I mean, she wouldn't do it _again_ ,” Willow hastened to clarify. “Not now. I mean I know Angel’s left her again like he did the last time, but--” 

“This Angel guy’s made Buffy run off before?” Riley interjected. 

“Well--yeah,” Willow hesitated. “But-but i-it was way more complicated than that, Riley, and besides I didn’t mean to say she’d run away now, she’s happy. She’s in college, she’s dating a normal guy like you--” 

“What do you mean ‘normal’?”

Willow squeaked and slapped a guilty hand over her mouth. Practically shriveling under Riley’s probing glare, she tactfully turned her attention back to Joyce, Xander, and Rupert. 

“She’s happy,” Willow implored them all. “She wouldn’t run away now when she’s so happy.” 

Well that was something, at least. Rupert didn’t have to take Willow’s word that Buffy was most definitely in a much better place than she was at the end of the whole Angel debacle the year before last. That, however, didn’t mean there wasn’t something to Xander’s earlier suggestion. Rupert can’t remember the last time the boy was right about anything, but every dog had to have its day eventually. 

“Yes, well,” Rupert said. “Going back to Xander’s point, has anyone been in contact with Angel since Buffy’s gone missing?”

“Does he own a phone?” Joyce asked pointedly, raising up her head from its position bent over her clasped hands. “I mean who does a v--” She shot Riley an uncertain glance that didn’t go unnoticed by the young soldier. “Who would he have to call? He didn’t strike me as a very social man. I always got the impression that Buffy was the only person in his life that he associated with regularly.” 

Rupert shook his head. “You’re not wrong. However, since moving to Los Angeles, Angel’s become rather more outgoing. From what I’ve gathered, he’s opened a detective agency there to more or less continue the work he was doing here with Buffy. There should at least be a contact number for his office.” 

“Alright, then,” Xander clapped his hands together, pleased with himself. “It’s after dark, Dead Boy should be up by n--” 

He cut himself off just as the damning words left his mouth. A blush crept over his cheeks as he ducked his head to avoid the six incriminating stares shooting his in his direction. Rupert breathed a weary sigh and shook his head. He had spoken too soon. 

“‘Dead Boy’,” echoed a disbelieving Riley. “You can’t be suggesting that Buffy’s ex is a- a _vampire_?”

There was a collective flinch that went around the room as they all did their best to avoid Riley’s eyes and all the uncomfortable questions that were sure to be found in them. Rupert thanked his lucky stars that Spike was asleep and that Anya wasn't well versed enough in Buffy and Angel’s rather operatic history to comment. 

“Well, y’see, Riley ole pal--” Xander began clumsily, but was blessedly cut off by a loud knock at the front door. 

Joyce put up a hand to pause the conversation and excused herself to go receive their new arrival. Feeling strangely _aware_ at the sudden interruption, Rupert got to his feet to follow her. 

It was a short walk from the living room to the front door, but apparently not short enough for the person behind it. The second knock rang out just as Joyce reached for the doorknob, polite but insistent. Emphatic. Familiar. Rupert realized why as soon as Joyce swung open the door to reveal the impatient-looking vampire in question waiting behind it. 

Angel stood gracelessly before them, looking every bit his patently grim self, cloaked in his trademark duster and shrouded in the shadows of the moonless, pitch-black night. But there seemed to be an added cowl of ominousness over him tonight. His mouth was set in a hard, thin line. His shoulders curved inward, making him appear slightly crouched; a predator already in the throes of the hunt. The only thing missing was the demon’s true face, thankfully still concealed beneath its human visage. Still, the rest was more than enough to make Rupert take a step back, bringing Joyce with him. If Angel noticed the trepidatious response his sudden appearance in this state had brought on in Rupert and Joyce, he was too far gone to try and set them at ease. Oddly, Rupert found the genuine menace he saw in the demon’s eyes reassuring as well as disquieting. Perhaps it was the panic behind it, the urgency. Only one person in all the world could provoke such emotion in a being such as Angel. 

“It’s Buffy,” Angel grunted by way of greeting, before sweeping past Rupert and Joyce without even bothering to wait for the perfunctory invitation. 


	4. The Replacement

She comes to flat on her back: cold, exposed, and blinded by the bright white light beaming down on her from overhead. Her Slayer instincts kick in instantly, recognizing that she’s been bound and drugged up with something--a lot of something, judging by the swimmy feeling in her head—and demanding that her body respond in kind. But it can’t. She feels too heavy, weighted down by a truckload of invisible bricks. She should be able to snap the restraints bolting down her arms with a flick of her wrist, but her arms...aren’t...working…

_What the…?_

Her legs are hiked up and spread apart. The searing pain between them only intensifies as Buffy comes further into awareness. She can’t see, but she can _feel_ the—whatever it is—cold, sharp, pointed—probing her, _piercing_ _her_ as it sinks its way in deeper, deeper, and deeper into her most sensitive flesh. She tries to sit up, to scooch away from the thing tearing its way into her, but her body refuses to respond to her internal struggling.  A cry of pain—of rage—of indignity—tumbles up Buffy’s throat only to be stymied by her locked jaw. It ekes its way past her barely-parted lips as a soundless mewl. But tears are involuntary, and so Buffy relishes them, thanks them, even, for drowning out her eyes and shielding her from the blinding light above her; a futile consolation, but appreciated all the same. It does not go unnoticed. 

“...awake, sir. What should we do?”

Voices. There are voices arguing now...Over her...About her...But too far away for Buffy to make sense of them. Or maybe she’s the one who’s far away. 

“Leave it. Walsh planned for this eventuality. She wants to see how much the girl can take.” 

_Take…?_

The thought hits Buffy before the next stab of pain. Is that what they’re going for? Do they want her baby? Are they gonna cut it out and dissect it? Sell the parts off to science? Give the skeleton to some freaky carnival show? ‘Come one, come all to see the Fetus With Two Heads’?

Screw that! That’s _her_ two-headed fetus in there, and Buffy’ll be damned if she’s gonna...gonna…

_Oh, God…_

Another jolt of pain hits her and Buffy feels her body jerk up in a low arch over the slab, an involuntary spasm. When she tries to move again her muscles are still locked. 

This isn’t happening. This isn’t happening. 

She hasn’t been taken captive in some black-site military bunker. She isn’t strapped down to a table, immobilized and at the mercy of a bunch of faceless whack job scientists chomping at the bit to cut her baby out of her. She’s the Slayer. She’s Buffy. She’s the thing creeps like this have nightmares about. She—

She can’t…

She can’t…

_Stop, it hurts. Please. Please, it hurts._

“Nuh….nnnnn…”

“Shit. Should she be able to speak?”

“No. Give her another round before more of her adrenaline comes back.”  

Something pricks her arm and the lights dim, the pain remains, and Buffy’s last attempt at a scream dies in her throat.

 

* * *

 

She next wakes on her side. There’s music playing faintly in the background and a finger prodding at the knobs along her spine as the finger’s owner sings along, the words too fuzzy for Buffy to follow. 

A tiny prick that goes from just that to a white hot stabbing in zero to sixty, as something sharp--a needle? A knife?--is plunged into her lower back. A sound escapes Buffy’s lips. It’s meant to be _‘Please’_ , but it comes out as a wordless whimper. She hates herself for both. The Singing Man sinks the needle-knife in deeper and starts to whistle along to the last notes of his fading song.

* * *

 

It’s cold, colder than normal, probably because she’s lost so much blood. Hogans' Heroes have left for lunch, but their handiwork is still fresh. The blood from the tiny incisions they’ve made across her abdomen itches like crazy as it dribbles out of the open wounds; drop by drop, like a runny nose she can’t wipe. All things considered, it’s not the primary source of her discomfort at the moment, but it is the most annoying. She wonders if they’ll even bother to clean the mess up once they come back and see that “super-healing ability” doesn’t mean “Scratches Disappear in Under an Hour Or Your Slayer Back.” 

There’s an equally irritating heart-rate monitor to her right. To distract herself, Buffy tries to turn the sing-song _beep-beep-beep-beep_ into a mantra. It sort of works, allowing her mind go idle for a bit. The first semi-solid thought it lands on being whether the monitor is for her or for Seamonkey—assuming he’s still…

No. No, she isn’t going to go there. She can’t. 

But...what if...

_Please. Please still be in there. Please be alright._

The instant the thought hits her, Buffy just has to feel him, to know that they didn’t take him from her. That they haven’t scooped him out and pickled him in a jar and given him to Walsh to put on her shelf between her shrunken heads and centaur hooves. If she could just feel her stomach. If she could just lift her hands and place them over him, she knows she’d know without a shadow of a doubt that he was still in there. Still alive. Still safe, in a manner of speaking. But it’s no use. Try as Buffy might, in her current state, to lift her arms would be like trying to lift an eighteen-wheeler one handed. Pointless. She can't even twitch her fingers. Or rather, she wouldn’t be able to even if she wasn’t locked inside her own body; they’d already seen to them yesterday—one by one. 

Instead, Buffy closes her eyes and tries to focus. Tries to shut out the stupid monitor and the itchy blood and the gnawing twinge in her hands to find any sign of her baby still being alive inside her.  

_C’mon Seamonkey, you know I can’t reach you. Just give me just one little kick. Just one._

Nothing. 

_Fine. Be that way, then._

* * *

 

There are two guys. One is going up to Napa for a long weekend with his soon-to-be fiancé, “fingers crossed.” The other is going home to Reno for his parents’ 40 th wedding anniversary, he and his brothers and sister are throwing them a surprise party. They’re both restless with anticipation for their respective big weekends, and it’s making them sloppy. Anniversary’s impatient hands shake as they roll her over onto her side. Of course they’d be the ones to get stuck with scut work just before the end of the week, Fiancé grumbles. Relax, says Anniversary. This’ll be over in a snap and then we’re home free. 

The needle Fiancé jams into her hipbone is enormous, a caricature taken out of some traumatized kid’s nightmare. It’s not as bad as the needle she’d gotten in the back, but it’s pretty damn close. Her legs twitch violently when it pierces her bone and Anniversary leaps up to hold them down, but he’s not quick enough to keep Fiancé from losing his balance. The needle plunges in deeper as Fiancé tries to right himself before it’s quickly ripped out. Buffy’s vision blurs with tears that sting her swollen eyes as they trail their way down a familiar path all the way to her chin.  

Above her, Fiancé cracks up when Anniversary tells him about how his girlfriend’s been taking pole dancing lessons for the past couple of weeks, “Part of some hot new exercise fad, apparently.” 

“Emphasis on _hot_ , you lucky asshole!” 

They slap each other high five and Anniversary flips Buffy over onto her other side so that Fiancé can try again. 

* * *

A hand—large, calloused—comes into view just as it snaps her head back against the chair’s headrest, and shoves a small bowl of spinach into her wobbly hands. 

Buffy almost lets it drop on purpose; she’s sick to death of spinach. But she also hurts too much right now to go the whole ‘refusing to eat on principle’ route this time. She’s got their routine down at this point, and so she knows once she’s done they’ll be finished with her for the time being. And despite the fact that the killer pain coursing through her every muscle at the moment is sure to get worse once they return, for those few sweet hours between the end and beginning of their workday, she’ll be allowed to rest. 

She wonders if mad scientists have a sense of irony; if any of them would find the funny in her being in so much pain at the moment that she’s effectively looking forward to being locked inside her body again. Buffy certainly does...Almost. In fact, she could be persuaded to think that this whole catch-22 thing was deliberate on their part for that very reason; because they were counting on her to be too eager to be put back under to try anything that would postpone it. 

_Could_ be persuaded, if not for the tranq guns pointed at her head. 

_Never hurts to be prepared..._

As always, it takes Buffy a few minutes to orient herself to the sensation of being upright before she can remember enough of the body mechanics involved in feeding herself to actually do it. And even then, her attempts are sloppy and pathetic, thanks to the state of her hands. The only thing that makes the humiliation bearable is that by now she knows no one in the room is paying her enough attention to care that she eats like a baby koala on one of those nature documentaries. 

“...BP?”

“Ninety-eight over sixty-nine.” 

“Has there been any substantial change in weight?”

“Down approximately four pounds since initial examination.”

“Status on rib fractures?” 

“Unchanged.” 

“Abdominal incisions?” 

“Unchanged.” 

“Bruising from lumbar punctures?” 

“Unchanged.”

“Have you adjusted the…” 

Buffy tunes them out as their words become less wordy and more med school reject gobbledygook, and instead focuses on trying to choke down more of the spinach. It’s mushier today than it normally is. Bitterer, too, or maybe that’s just her. 

In the beginning, this would have been the part where Buffy started screaming; _demanding_ to know what they were doing to her, who they thought they were keeping her down here like this, what they’d drugged her with, _what the day was—_ only to have all of her ranting summarily ignored as though she hadn’t even spoken. As though she were invisible; an unperson, a lab rat. 

She used to tell herself back then that her fits weren’t pointless. It was the principle of the thing. So what if they ignored her. Her mouth worked, she should make as much noise as she could with it before they silenced her again. Make them pay for it, preemptively. 

That was before, though. And not that anything too dramatic has happened since then, it’s just...

“Baby’s vitals?”

“Stable.” 

That was something. The one other good thing about keeping quiet during these mealtime wrap up sessions, she got to hear about Seamonkey. 

God, she’s just so _tired_ …

* * *

 

Buffy wonders if Riley knows. If he’s actually here, apart of all this. If he's one of the faceless drones jamming needles into her: one of the scalpels slicing into her flesh, breaking her bones. Reporting his findings back to Professor Walsh at the end of the day like a good little soldier boy. 

There’s an ironic tickling sensation in her bruised chest and Buffy thinks it might be a laugh. 

God, she’d been such an idiot, and now she and Seamonkey were going to die here. Dr. Franken-Walsh and her minions were going to keep cutting and cutting and cutting away at her ‘til there was nothing left, and then Walsh would probably preserve her skull in carbonite and put it in a glass case to keep on display: another freak added to her collection.

Was that all she was to Riley? A trinket to give to his boss?

_Hope you at least got a promotion out of the deal, Jerk._

_God_ , has there ever been a more humiliating end to a Slayer’s life? Is this what she came back from the Master for? To end up like this, a carved up pin cushion rotting away on Dr. Feelgood’s table? 

_Given the choice, I would have preferred drowning in the Master’s sewer-crypt. At least then I would’ve gone down swinging._

_Why_ don’t _Slayers get a say in what their deaths will be, anyway? Shouldn’t there be at least one thing in this world we get to choose?_

There’s a Giles-in-her-head answering that last question with an exasperated half-sigh. Buffy cuts him off before he can get all Stiff Upper Lip about duty and destiny and the universe being random and unpredictable for us all, Buffy.

_I’m sorry._

There are too many things to rattle off, but Fake-Giles gets it. Hopefully, he can pass everything along to the real one. 

Does the real one know she’s missing? Does Mom? Willow? Xander? Are they out looking for her? Or has she been missing long enough now that they’ve given her up for dead?

Not that it matters. She will be soon, anyway. Again. For good this time. 

Will they have a funeral for her? 

Then again, how can they without a body to bury? 

Her throat tickles with another bitter laugh as she tries to picture Mom, Giles, Willow and Xander, and Dad—if he wasn’t too busy to show up to her imaginary funeral—all just standing around an empty grave. She has to laugh. Her eyes are too sore for any more tears.  

_Maybe Walsh can do me this one solid and dump my body in a quarry somewhere once she’s done with it. They all deserve a real goodbye._

 


	5. The Rescue

Dimly, Angel is aware that no small part of him should be mortified at how easy it had been for him to slip back into old habits; but unfortunately, the relished sensation of hot, fresh blood pooling in the back of his throat for the first time in almost a year has dulled that particular sense for the time being.

Good.

Here comes the part where he’s to begin losing himself in guilt over not feeling guilty for straying from the path in the first place, but he’s too far gone for that now, too satisfied with himself. It’s not often he gets to feel this—this pure, uninhibited _relief_ (Like he’s just let out a breath he’d been holding in for over a hundred years)— and just once— _just this once_ —he wants to be able to savor it. Nothing like this will ever happen again—he’s got a whole list of reasons for why he can be certain of that—but he’s gone and done it now. It’s done. He can’t take it back, so he might as well let himself bask in it while he can before his mind gets right again. He _deserves_ to. What he’s done here

—In a matter of minutes. Half-fed and a century out of practice, _he_ had done this. _Made_ this. ( _It’s been so long…_ )—

is nothing short of magnificent.

 _Unconscionable!_ the Man insists, from…somewhere. Faint. Weak. All too easily drowned out by the demon’s song. ( _Grotesque! Hideous! Profane!_

 _Beautiful_ … the demon purrs in refrain.)

Angel allows his eyes one final moment to drink in his handiwork while he tries to plan a route around the bog of coagulating blood and torn limbs covering the floor; his tongue playing idly at the stringy bits of flesh dangling between his fangs (Cold now, but still a treat he no longer gets to indulge in now that he gets his food pre-packaged). The once-forgotten quirk making him feel all the more like a fledgling again, especially when paired with the other thing…

Speaking as an artist, Angel can’t quite say he’s proud. Not that the work is sloppy so much as it is uninspired (as is to be expected when you commit mass slaughter in the spur of the moment). He’s sure if he’d taken time to brainstorm, he could have done more with the limbs at least, instead of leaving them scattered across the floor like used up pastels. (For a second, he entertains the idea of collecting all the sets of arms, and propping them up against the far wall with each pair of hands clasped together as though in applause. But that’d be too much). Still…

However, speaking as a…” _deconstructivist,”_ Angel can’t help but be pleased with himself.

He’s painted the walls of this stark white hellhole from floor to ceiling, in every shade of blood from orange-brown rust to fresh-bitten currant. The latter, thick with pulpy chunks of puréed flesh and sinew, scattered about the canvas; little red dwarves dripping heartbeat-red streaks in every direction like vengeful sunbeams springing off a dying star. His debut masterpiece following a century-long sabbatical; an aberrant splatter painting to “liven up” the room’s obstinate sterility.

Overcome, Angel’s nostrils flare as he snaps his head back in a moment of imagined ecstasy, taking in the full breadth of the scene before him for one last, final time.

The air is wet and heavy with the metallic scent of blood and stale meat; overriding the nauseating blend of latex and antiseptic that had first assaulted him upon entering this cursed room. Angel imagines that if any of the room’s other occupants could still smell, they’d find it all suffocating. But for him, it’s (refreshing, arousing)…

Familiar.

That’s enough.

 _That’s enough_ , he tells himself again, fists clenched, his entire body seizing up in concentration; trying and failing to untwist the demon’s smirk. Trying and failing to quell the high still lighting him up from within. Trying and failing to ignore the smug voice whispering in his ear, _You haven’t lost your touch!_

 _Nope_ , he finally relents. The magic word, it seems. For now, the demon is satisfied and sinking back into dormancy, taking whatever pride Angel has left with it back into stasis.

Good. Now with that banal admission out of the way, Angel can focus. There is no clean route around the curdled ponds of gore that have transformed the pristine linoleum floor into a series of small islands, rendered nearly inaccessible for the inch-thick swamp of red-black blood.

Alright, so maybe he _has_ gotten a bit rusty.

Leaving footprints behind will be a blow to his ego, for sure, but thankfully, due to the spell Willow and her friend Tara have cast over this place, that’ll be the least of his concerns. He and Buffy will be long gone before any of the little scientists and soldier boys here have regained enough of their wits to think to track him.

A flash then, of the morning crew sauntering their way into this room; half-asleep, mourning the weekend, anticipating the day to be another boring grind at the lab, until they flip the lights to find their lab refurbished with the gory vestiges of their former colleagues (who hadn’t even noticed their butcher entering the room until he was tearing the skinny one’s throat out. Who had screamed and pleaded and _wailed_ for help, then, for mercy as he picked them off one by one) and Angel feels another high spike through him. Small, fleeting; a denouement that is abruptly cut short as he shifts his gaze forward and takes his first step toward his ultimate goal.

He doesn’t drag his feet in getting to Buffy—Willow had assured him that her spell would give him “enough” time to get in and out, and he’s already taken too many liberties with the definition—

But when he reaches her…

Now, _now_ is when the shame should kick in— _would_ kick in, ideally. Now, as he’s staring down into the sallow face of his beloved; carved up and braised, a slab of meat hanging from a butcher’s rack. Her porcelain skin appearing parched and translucent from the fluorescent light beaming down on her. Her flaxen hair matted in oily, straw-like clumps. Her pink lips cracked and colorless. Setting the back of his hand against her cheek confirms Angel’s fears; she’s as cold to the touch as he. And yet, as he moves down her neck, he finds a steady pulse between his index and ring fingers, setting him somewhat at ease again

Beautiful. She is alive and beautiful and here with him. Alive and unconscious and mercifully innocent to the carnage surrounding her. His beautiful Buffy; strong and forgiving and righteous-minded, who would never in a hundred lifetimes thank him for what he’s done here in her name, would never forgive the truth of him if she knew.

(A moot point, Angel decides then. She will never know. The high has left him with just enough hubris to vow here and now that the full truth of what has happened here will be another burden that he alone will bear for the both of them.)

And this is what They’ve done to her. Splayed her out along a cold steel slab as though she were a cadaver; completely bare, save for the countless lesions coloring her ashen skin, and the tubes hooking her to the machines and monitors stationed on either side of the table on which she lay. The Director’s minions had been wrapping up for the day when he’d intercepted them; which means this had been how they’d intended to leave her—how they must have left her every day they’d held her here—exposed and picked over, without so much as a sheet to protect her from the room’s chill.

The demon is ablaze again with insatiate bloodlust, and for once, the soul matches it as Angel scowls down at the torn limbs lying at his feet. Damn taking liberties, it had been over too soon for them. He should have taken his time. He’s out of practice, after all.

With an impatient snarl, Angel discards the useless thought before it can take him too far. These aren’t the sort of regrets he needs to be entertaining right now. There’s no point, with nothing left in this room for him to kill. Back to the task at hand.

He goes for the IV first, sliding the needle out of Buffy’s arm as carefully as he can, so as not to leave behind yet another bruise. A consideration her captors clearly hadn’t deemed necessary, Angel fumes; unable to stop himself from counting every last one of the blue-green abrasions spanning the full length of both her arms. The physical reminder of what these people have taken from her— _taken, and taken, and taken, and taken!_ —slowly working him into another fury. One Angel feared he would be unable to quell in the absence of any more necks to snap. And so, once the offending instrument has been removed from her body, he takes a second just to hold it contemptuously between his forefinger and thumb; then, after a beat, snaps it in half. Then again. Then again, until it’s reduced to barely more than shards, which he lets scatter in the swamp of blood and tissue at his feet. The satisfaction is nothing compared to that of wrenching an arm from its socket, but it gets the job done.

He’s that much calmer as he rids Buffy of the remaining needles, disposing of them in a similar fashion as he had the first. When she’s at last free of her bonds, he slips off his coat and, taking care not to jostle her any more than necessary, maneuvers her into a sitting position and gently guides her arms through the holes of the sleeves. HIs duster is, of course, several sizes too big for her, and so he bundles the excess material around her like a blanket; swaddling her, in the hopes that just the one layer will be enough to protect her against the chilly February night.

Holding her for the first time in months is a jarring sensation for reasons expected and not. Obviously, Buffy hasn’t been in this place long enough to have lost any significant weight or muscle mass. But even so, she is all timber wood bone and tearaway paper skin held in his arms; a twig half snapped in his indelicate grip, making Angel tremble with this unknown fragility of her.

It’s _here_ ; now, as he begins to wade his way through the swamp of shredded limbs and stale blood leading up to the door, with Buffy’s precious head tucked against the place where his heart should beat, that Angel’s full senses finally return to him. And, as always, it’s all he can do to cling to her to keep himself upright as he steals them away from this latest horror.

 

 


	6. The Plan

It is approximately one hour and forty-seven minutes following Angel’s departure from Revello Drive that the fretful limbo that has been holding the home’s occupants in its stranglehold for nearly two hours is lifted by a sudden, foundation-rattling _BANG!!!_ coming from the front door. At the sharp call to action, the small group gathered in the Summers’ living room break their torpid silence with a collective sigh of relief, and respond to the anticipated intrusion in kind.

Still coming down from his first proper breath in nearly six days, Rupert doesn’t quite have it in him to chance a second before he and Joyce are on their feet and sprinting to the foyer, Riley, Xander, and Willow right at their heels. The frenzy in the knocking coming from the other side of the threshold gives Rupert pause, and as Joyce reached for the door, he gestures for the children to move back into the living room so as to give Angel a wider berth. Amazingly, they obey, but he is too late to get to Joyce, and she and Angel collide when the latter comes charging through the open door; wild and panting, sans coat, as it’s wrapped around the precious bundle clutched to his chest.

Buffy is pale and impossibly small cradled in Angel’s arms as she is; dwarfed by the vampire’s duster, her head just barely managing to poke through the collar. Rupert doesn’t need common sense to tell him she is unconscious. Of course she is, it’s the only time she’s ever so still. Naturally, he’d been anticipating her being in such a state when they got her back, but nevertheless, his stomach still gives the painful lurch it always does whenever Buffy is hurt. His fingers twitch at his sides.

He steadies himself. Angel has come to a tense stop in front of him and Joyce, who right now appears to have too many questions bubbling at the surface to get them all out in any manner of coherence. That would leave himself, if not for the fact that the only question on Rupert’s lips won’t be answered until he can just…

His hands twitch again as Angel moves toward them. If you asked Rupert in those few quick seconds whether it was him who reached for Buffy or Angel who thrust her into his arms, he could tell you nothing except that the action caught him so off-guard he would have dropped her were it not for her mother’s support. Angel springing so suddenly had put Rupert immediately on guard, and grabbing Joyce’s arm, he brought the two of them and Buffy back a few paces. Instead of moving to follow them, Angel feinted to the left in the direction of a red-faced Riley and Xander, whose renewed presence in the foyer had gone unnoticed by Rupert until his ears finally registered what they were both screaming.

_“What have you done to her?! What have you done to her?!!”_

At first, Rupert has to resist the urge to roll his eyes. Xander’s paranoia when it comes to Angel is legendary, but he’d expected better of Riley. Boyfriend or not, he should be able to put aside petty jealousy and prejudice to allow Angel to do what must be done to save Buffy without feeding off of Xander’s one-sided rivalry.

But then, as though actually seeing Angel for the first time since his return, Rupert’s eyes catch something, something he in all his years of training should have caught the moment the vampire crossed the threshold: blood. Thick and salient, staining the vampire’s mouth and chin like an overgrown child gone wild in a chocolate shop. Now really, there was out of practice and then there was just plain lazy. Even as a former Watcher, this should have been the first thing to catch his attention.

Quickly, he adjusts Buffy in his arms to free one of his hands to check her pulse. It’s there, thank God; slower than usual, but steady. That, combined with the fact that he could find no fresh bite marks along her neck sets Rupert at ease, even as the unpreventable carnage unfolds in front of him.

Feral and snarling, Angel’s demon has surfaced at last, its bloodstained fangs bared, its yellow eyesmenacing. Xander flinched back a step at the sight of him, but Riley stands tall. Bracing himself for the attack, he slides back into an easy defensive stance as Angel stalks toward him. The soldier is unprepared. His muscles barely have a chance to flex before the vampire has him pinned against the wall by the throat.

“Tell me again that you didn’t know,” Angel growled in a low voice. Confused and agitated, Riley’s face purpled as he did his best to squeak out a response through Angel’s unforgiving grip.

“Say it!” the demon roared. His tone then switched to mocking. “You had no idea what they could possibly want with her! That’s what you told us, right?!”

“What the hell are you talking about? Get off him!” Xander shouted, having made a full recovery from his earlier apprehension. The first of them to intervene, the boy tugged uselessly at the vampire’s grip on Riley’s neck. Undaunted, Angel let Riley drop for the second it takes him to haul back and deck Xander. Then, assumedly unfinished with his interrogation, pulled the gasping Riley back up by the neck.

“Hey!”

Anya, finally deigning to care about all the commotion happening around her, stormed into the foyer to tend to Xander, still sprawled out on the floor. Finding him conscious, she threw a quick, unimpressed scowl over her shoulder up at Angel.

“The soldier already told you he knew nothing about what his superiors’ plans for Buffy were, so why don’t you put him down and focus on tending to your injured lover instead of taking your frustrations out on mine?!”

Perhaps there is something to be said for the wisdom of one’s elders, Rupert thought wryly, as Angel—after a dangerous pause—let Riley slump back down to the floor and turned, meek and human-looking to once again face Joyce and Rupert.

“I’ll…wait down here,” he offered lamely.

At that suggestion, the volume of the already silent room dropped several more decibels.

“Ah,” Rupert fidgeted as he felt Joyce tense at his side as though she could sense his next words forming in his head. “Perhaps it would be best if you joined us upstairs. We may need your help.”

From the floor, Xander and Riley both made vague noises of protest. Anya scoffed. Out of the living room came a purposefully obnoxious chuckle. Spike was finally awake, then. Brilliant.

Angel, for his part, did his best to temper his gratitude.

“Right,” he said with a short nod to Rupert.

Rupert returned it, and ignoring the rest, stepped back from the foot of the staircase to allow Joyce ahead of him to lead the three of them, plus Buffy up the stairs.

They file into Buffy’s room silently. The last of them to enter, Rupert set Buffy down on her bed as gently as he is able. Before he can ask Joyce if she keeps a spare first aid kit in the house (as Buffy, obviously, would have taken her’s to school with her), she snaps her fingers and bolts from the room in a frustrated huff. Leaving Rupert in the room alone with an unconscious Buffy and an unreadable Angel, who has remanded himself to the far corner of the room by the closet. Rupert rolls his eyes and takes a seat at Buffy’s side on the edge of the bed.

He finds he can’t take his eyes off her for fear she might wake, or worse, not. It is a testament to how far he and Buffy have come (or, as Travers would put it, how far he’s strayed) that Rupert finds either outcome to be unbearable. Once, Buffy’s death had been his greatest fear. A shameful secret, a weakness he’d tried so very hard to conquer. Only to fail in the end, and prove once and for all that despite his father’s insistence on tradition, Rupert made for a terrible Watcher. Still, that was all in the past now. Buffy’s eventual death—whether it happened in the next few hours, or in the next few years—would continue to haunt him until the day it happened, and likely for some time after. But this? This…utter helplessness that had come with days of not knowing where on Earth his Slayer could possibly be, the frustration and despair that came now with not knowing precisely what those troglodytes masquerading as scientists could have done to her while she was in their captivity, the nagging doubt that she would ever be the same person—the same Buffy—when—if—she ever woke… all of that was something else entirely. Something new. There is a word in Rupert’s vocabulary that means “a feeling beyond fear,” but at the moment, he’s too busy drowning in it to remember the name.

His thoughts are interrupted by the sound of rummaging coming from the closet.

“What are you doing,” Rupert asks wearily. Typically, Angel doesn’t answer him until he emerges, a medium-sized medical kit held in his hands. It’s still shrink-wrapped, which of course means it’s never been used. Jackpot.

“Buffy’s first aid kit,” he said, brandishing the case by way of explanation. “She always keeps a spare, just in case.”

Apparently great minds do think alike, Rupert thought sarcastically.

“R-Right,” Rupert stumbles, only a little embarrassed that he hadn’t just gone and asked Joyce about it when he’d thought to. “I was going to—“

“—Her fingers are broken. All of them,” Angel pressed over him. He set the box on the floor and slid it over to Rupert with the toe of his boot, then shoved his hands in his pockets and faded back into the corner.

Rupert murmured an understanding and pulled the case into his lap. Tearing away the plastic packaging, he wasted no time in rifling through the kit for the medical tape. Reaching for Buffy’s right arm, he rolls down her too-long sleeve until her hand is free. A quick examination of the bones lets him know that the fractures will heal just fine with a makeshift splint, but for the first time all night, Rupert finds himself glad that Buffy is unconscious. Having to more or less hogtie her in order to get her to let him reset her bones was always right at the top of his list of least favorite post-patrol exercises. He doesn’t believe either of them could endure the embarrassment of one of Buffy’s fits under the present circumstances.

Unexpectedly, at that last thought, a few droplets of water land on the taped portion of Buffy’s ring finger. Rupert brushes them off before they can leave residue on the tape, then removes his glasses to rub away a few flecks of dust with the hem of his shirt. He blinks aggressively for the next several seconds until an eyelash breaks off and falls into his eye. They’re raw by the time he finishes rubbing at them, but the margin of relief it provides him makes it worth it. Rupert is bleary-eyed when he returns to the task at hand, even with his glasses on. Lucky for him, Buffy’s broken enough bones that he could mend them blind.

Joyce returns just as he’s started on Buffy’s other hand, carrying a basin of hot water and some clean linens, her own eyes tellingly red. She doesn’t ask for an explanation when she sees what Rupert is doing, but having nothing else to say, he gives one anyway.

“Her fingers are broken.”

A stiff nod in response, as she goes to take her place on the other side of Buffy. Joyce is turned away from them when she speaks next, her voice uncharacteristically throaty.

“Do you have any idea of what else they could have done to her?”

Ashamed, Rupert wishes that he could give her a better answer, but he waves his hand over the leather jacket protecting Buffy’s modesty. Though he has in fact seen her in various states of undress as a result of how frequently she is injured after a patrol or mission, Buffy has always been conscious during those times and has always made sure to cover her more….sensitive areas. Rupert shudders to think of what she’d say if she knew he’d ever seen her in the full nude. She’d never look at him the same way again.

“I..er, I didn’t want to…” he trails off helplessly. His cheeks burn as his words continue to trip over themselves on their way out. 

“She’s been drugged,” Angel answers her, taking pity on Rupert from his place by the door. “Heavily. I don’t know with what exactly, but it smells like a combination of sedative and some kind of muscle relaxer. It’s strong enough that I can smell it on her from over here.”

Back still turned to them, Joyce makes a strangled noise in the back of her throat, then straightens her back before turning around to address Angel directly for the first time that evening. Her mouth opens for a brief second, then clips shut, as she takes in the vampire’s appearance for the first time.

Now once again facing Angel himself, Rupert can’t believe that Xander of all people had had to be the one to point out the state of the vampire’s appearance to him. Angel looks—if you’ll pardon the irony--like something straight out of one of those God awful horror films the children have him watch at times (because of course they don’t get enough of that in their day to day). Blood not only caked the area around his mouth and chin but trailed all the way down his neck, ending in little splotches along his white collared blouse. His hands, too—folded in front of him like a naughty schoolboy—were crusted with red. As were the bottoms of his boots. Rupert hopes for all their sakes the vampire hadn’t been fool enough to have left behind tracks.

His head bowing further under Rupert’s appraisal and Joyce’s disgust, Angel saves them the trouble of asking the question.

“They’re all dead,” he says tonelessly. “Every scientist and doctor in that room with her—I don’t know how many. I think I counted eight sets of legs…”

At that revelation, Rupert feels his gut twist. This, too, he had been anticipating when Angel had nominated himself to go after Buffy, alone. The vampire was on the side of good, yes, but soul or no, he was still a demon. While most of him can’t fault Angel for what he’d done to the vermin who had done this to Buffy—with a small, horrifying part of him even imagining himself doing something similar, and _loving it_ —the trained Watcher in him could never bring himself to condone a demon’s bloodlust.

“They…they had her hooked up to all these monitors and needles,” the vampire murmurs. To himself or to Joyce and Rupert, Rupert couldn’t be sure, but his tone is so diffident and pleading he may as well have been on his knees.

“They cut into her,” he continues, dragging a hand through his hair as he began to back and forth. “They experimented on her. Broke her bones. Shot her up with God knows what. She hates needles. She hates doctors…”

He comes to an abrupt stop then, as if finally coming to terms. “I killed them all,” he said numbly. “I tore everyone in that room limb from limb and left the pieces for their friends to find in the morning.”

Rupert says nothing. Again, he removes his glasses and with the hem of his shirt and begins to rub away the imagined dust. Beside him, Joyce is doing her best to smother her shallow gasps with the fist pressed against her mouth. She draws a long, audible breath in through her nose. Then another. Then another. Then, to Angel, says

“There are more washcloths and towels in the closet just outside the bathroom.”

Both an invitation and a ‘thank you,’ Rupert supposes. Angel, accepting the former, at least, exits the room for the hallway.

“Help me,” Joyce says to Rupert once the vampire leaves, tugging tightly at the lapels of the jacket Buffy is still wrapped in by way of explanation.

“She won’t know,” she says impatiently to his obvious reticence. Bringing over the basin of water and dropping a washrag inside, she frowns at Rupert’s inaction. “Angel said they cut her. The wounds could be infected. We need to see, and I can’t get the jacket off without your help.”

Under duress, Rupert complies. Closing his eyes and turning his head away from Buffy’s prone form, he feels along for the collar and lapel of the jacket, and tugs it off, taking extra care as he pulls down the sleeve to not upset her splinted fingers. He hums in ascent to Joyce’s thanks, and keeps his head and back to her as she wipes Buffy down and applies antiseptic to her wounds, until

“Rupert!”

Against his will, his head snaps toward them. Thankfully, Joyce now has Buffy upright and slumped over so that only her back is visible to him.

Her back, and more importantly _her_ _spine_ … lined with purple and blue-black bruises.

Rupert’s stomach drops to his feet.

_Oh, Buffy…_

“What are these?” Joyce whispers in an urgent voice. “There are similar marks on her hips. On the bone.”

“Spinal fluid,” Rupert answers numbly. “And bone marrow. They would have punctured her spine and hip bone to-to…collect samples.”

Nodding, Joyce releases a wet breath as a lone tear trailed its way down her cheek. She hastily batted it away before continuing to run her hand along Buffy’s backbone, examining each of the bruises one by one. There were three in total, the one at the base of her spine being the largest—about the size of Rupert’s fist—and the most discolored, with purples and blues smearing together, graying at the overlap. For the needle to have left behind such a mark, they would have had to have literally ripped it out of that one spot again and again and again…

_Those utter—_

“Will she be able to walk?” Joyce asks, no longer able to hide the tremor from her voice. “When she wakes up, will she be able to walk? Will she make a full recovery?”

Rupert removed his glasses. “It’s…difficult to say,” he began.

Joyce’s eyes were burning holes into the side of his face. He did his best to ignore her.

While logically Rupert knows there was little chance that some underfunded offshoot of the American military being able to develop any kind of chemical compound that could strip the Slayer of her power completely, the jury was on whether they could somehow alter it, manipulate it for their own purposes. And without knowing what exactly the Initiative has done to Buffy and why, there is no way to tell what state she’ll be in when she awakens.

“I’m afraid it may be too soon to tell,” is the answer Rupert settles on. “There are many factors at play here. Not least of all that we don’t know precisely what was done to her and for what purpose.”

“Finn can help with that,” Angel supplied grimly. How long he had been there prior to making his presence known, Rupert didn’t know, but needless to say, he hadn’t missed this annoying quirk of his.

“Oh, would you just drop it!” Joyce snapped. It seemed the truce was over before it could even be enjoyed. “You got Buffy in and out of there with his help. If he was working against us, don’t you think he would have warned his superiors and comrades in advance?! He’s committing treason to save Buffy, and you thank him by nearly murdering him, _in my home_ , no less!”

Angel slunk back against the wall by the closet as though he’d been slapped, and said nothing more.

“Er, yes,” Rupert cut in awkwardly. “To your point, Joyce, Riley may be of some help to us in that regard…”

He braced himself, knowing exactly how well this next suggestion would go over.

“However, once the Initiative finds out Buffy’s escaped—in particular, the, um, manner in which she managed to escape,” Rupert shot a look over at Angel, who didn’t meet it. “They’re bound to be out for blood, so to speak. They’ll want her back, and Riley will be their primary target.”

Looking around at both Joyce and Angel, Rupert could see he’d better make his point fast.

“If we’re going to continue to solicit Riley’s help, we’ll need to take some of the heat off him. As Buffy will need to lay low for the time being, for at least as long as it takes her to recover.” He stuck the final landing with a meaningful look in Angel’s direction. “We may as well kill two birds with one stone and send her out of town.”

It didn’t take long for his intentions to sink in. Perhaps it was the fatigue of the past few days getting the better of him, but Rupert gets a positively wicked sense of pleasure in watching the two of them flit through the expected stages of reaction. Angel, at first is utterly gobsmacked. His mouth hung open wide for a long moment, then slowly closed, his lips pressing together in a stony line. Joyce, meanwhile, slumped back down onto the edge of the bed with another weary sigh. She dropped her head in her hands and gripped her hair by the roots, shaking it back and forth in plain disbelief. Unknowingly shaming Rupert for his earlier schadenfreude.

“I really don’t have a say in this at all, do I?” she mumbled, her voice brittle and airy; trained, as thought to keep from screaming.

Rupert came around and knelt before her at the foot of the bed. “There’s no safer place for her than with Angel, Joyce.” He lay a comforting hand on her shoulder. “He would do anything to keep her safe.”

“Anything,” Angel spoke up for the first time since Joyce’s earlier rebuke. “If you believe nothing else about me, Joyce, believe that.”

Joyce said nothing. Dragging her hands down her face, she tilted her head up at the room’s ceiling. Rupert and Angel exchanged a silent look of confusion but they both knew better than to press her.

“Let me get her dressed and pack her a bag,” Joyce finally mumbled, her eyes still trained on the ceiling.

 

* * *

 

They come down the same way they went up, Joyce in the lead, Angel, following behind at a safe distance, and Rupert bringing up the rear with Buffy, now clad in some aggressively pink, fleece travesty featuring anthropomorphic ice cream sundaes.

Willow is waiting for them at the landing, firing off questions at them before they can even make it down.

“Is Buffy gonna be okay? Why are you bringing her back downstairs, shouldn’t she be in bed? It’s almost 2:00 a.m., shouldn’t Angel be getting back to LA before the sun comes up? How long does it take to get back to LA from here, anyway? Oh! Speaking of time, did the spell work okay, Angel? I mean you were all bloody and ‘grr’ when you first got here and seeing as you’re not evil anymore that must mean you ran into some trouble right? Oh no! No one followed you here did they—”

“No,” Angel cut her off with a grimace. His glare must match Rupert and Joyce’s because after Willow’s big brown eyes trawl over the two of them, she mumbles a hasty apology and scurries away from the landing just as Joyce is about to reach it.

“Buffy will be going back to LA with Angel, Willow. At least for the time being,” Rupert explained gently.

The girl’s eyes and mouth widened, and Rupert feared another barrage was forthcoming. “But why, what about school? What about the Hellmouth, slaying! Wh—”

“It’s to keep her safe, Willow,” Joyce said with a calm she herself was failing to project. “Would you mind helping me grab some extra blankets from the hall closet? I’d like to set up a little bed for her in the backseat, if it’s alright with you, Angel.”

“Of course,” Angel said absently, his focus already on the remainder of the living room’s occupants. Sensing the danger to both life and property, Joyce and Rupert share a look, and after a beat, Rupert follows Angel into the room, while Joyce takes Willow back upstairs with her.

Rupert arrives in the living room just in time, it seems, as Riley and Angel were already sizing one another up, with Xander visibly throwing his lot in with his countryman.

“Riley, Xander” Rupert cut them all off before things could come to blows again. “I suppose you’ve already heard us tell Willow this, but we’ve decided that Buffy will be staying with Angel while she recuperates.”

He held up his hands to try and quell the immediate outcry, but it was no use. Neither boy would have it.

“Are you insane?!”

“Did you see him when he came in here?! Buffy’s in no shape to defend herself, we can’t trust her with him!”

“Giles what are you thinking?! Breaking her out of HQ is one thing, but sending her to stay with him? Are you ins—“

“Riley,” Rupert cut in sharply, his patience wearing thin as the late hour wore on. “This is for your benefit as well. If the Initiative finds out you’ve helped their captive escape—”

“I don’t care about that!” Riley said hotly. “It was the right thing to do. I didn’t enlist to help my country torture innocent girls! If I’m court marshaled for helping get Buffy out of there, so be it!”

Rupert pinched the bridge of his nose. “Yes, well, noble as that may well be, I’m afraid it’s of little use to us, practically speaking.”

That, at least, got both boys’ attention. Xander sat back down. Riley, sensing the conspiratorial edge in Rupert’s voice, sobered immediately. 

“We need to know exactly what the Initiative did to Buffy. What drugs they gave her. What the purpose of their experiments was. Why they took her in the first place, and so forth. And to find this out, we need a man on the inside.”

A determined look crossed the soldier’s features.

“I’m your guy. Whatever you need.”

Rupert clapped him on the shoulder. “Good man.”

Angel stepped up beside Rupert. The same territorial dislike from earlier etched clear across his face. To his credit, Riley matched him notch for notch.

“Thank you,” Angel said, stone-faced and sincere. “I’d apologize for earlier, but—”

“Don’t mention it,” Riley said flatly. “Just…take good care of Buffy. I feel like this is all my fault, getting her mixed up in all this. If anything happened to her as a result of me introducing her to Walsh…“

“ _Nothing_ will happen to her,” Angel growled. “Rest assured. You just concentrate on your end of the deal, and I’ll focus on—”

“Oh, I’m sure you’ll be doing plenty of ‘focusing,’ won’t you, Big Guy?” Spike—sick of being ignored—jeered from his position sprawled across the love seat. “Hope you got to take the Slayer for a spin at least once, Fish Boy. If not, for your sake you’d better be the type to take loss like a man. ‘Cos my sire’s not known to share his toy—”

Angel has Spike by the throat before the younger vampire can finish that last vulgar thought. Of course vampires don’t breathe, so there are no choking sounds to be made. But as the blond’s mocking expression goes from teasing, to irritated, to disbelieving, to panicked in a little under twenty seconds, Rupert begins to wonder if maybe this is it, if childe has finally pushed grandsire past his limit and is about to pay the ultimate price for his gall.

The rest of the room watches, equal parts eager and transfixed as desperation begins to creep into Spike’s struggling. His feet scrabble back and forth in the air in a cartoonish run. His fingers claw at Angel’s hand. He squirms, kicks, and beats at his grandsire like a rabid dog, and all the while Angel remains still as a statue; completely undaunted.

Then, there is an audible, agonizing _crunch_ of bone and a kind of garbled wail leaves Spike’s mouth as Angel punts him onto the floor like an American football. Ruthless, he brings up his boot to stomp down onto Spike’s crushed windpipe, the ghost of a sneer flickering across his face at Spike’s pathetic moans.

“The Hellmouth will be vulnerable with the Slayer out of commission,” Angel sneers down at him. “You’ll pick up her slack, William.”

Even now, flat on his back, with his mangled throat being crushed by the heel of his grandsire’s boot, Spike’s glare is mutinous.

Angel is unfazed. He brings his boot back up and stomps it down into Spike’s neck a second time, then sends a scowl Rupert’s way.

“He puts one foot out of line…” he cut himself off to leer back down at Spike.

“Don’t test me, boy.”

And something in the heated promise in Angel’s voice must do it for Spike, because the next words out of the younger demon’s mouth are a wheezing, undignified, “On it, Peaches.”

A moment passes in which no one moves an inch as the humans in the room serve as uninvited witnesses to the inscrutable vampiric blood oath exchanged between grandsire and childe, only to be promptly interrupted by a timid cough.

They all turn to see Willow and Joyce standing awkwardly in the threshold between the foyer and the living room. The former looking forlorn and put out to have missed so much in such a short amount of time. While next to her, poor Joyce wasn’t even bothering to hide the tears in her eyes anymore.

“The car is ready,” Willow squeaked somberly.

Angel nods, and scraping the bottom of his boot on Spike’s face, sweeps out of the room with barely a parting glance at Riley, Xander, and Anya. Watching the vampire take his leave, Rupert hugs Buffy to him and hangs back.

Xander is the first to move. Careful for once in his life as he approaches Buffy, he reaches out for her hand as though to squeeze it. Then, noticing the makeshift splints binding her fingers, thinks better of it and simply pats her hand thrice before stepping aside.

Riley is next. Conservative by nature, he doesn’t strike Rupert as the sort to exhibit affection in front of an audience. But somehow knowing this will likely be the last he sees of his girlfriend he allows a bit of tenderness to show through as he carefully brushes Buffy’s blond locks from her forehead, and presses a chaste kiss there. Rupert may have been ambivalent to the boy’s presence in his Slayer’s life, but in that moment, he feels for him.

Anya gives a quick wave from the couch, for which Xander and Rupert each give her a small smile of pride and appreciation, respectively; and with that, Rupert follows Willow and Joyce out the front door. 

He finds them all standing by Angel’s convertible (top up, thankfully). He’s not actually seen the vampire’s car before this moment (come to think of it, before now, he hadn’t actually put it together that Angel had driven here from Los Angeles in the first place), but never before has Rupert seen a car match its owner so perfectly. However, knowing that in a few seconds he’ll have to settle a gravely injured Buffy into it makes his stomach turn, and for a moment, Rupert wants to throttle himself for his own stupid idea. How could he have possibly thought putting his girl in the back seat of her mortal enemy’s (likely past inspection) vehicle and letting her ride off into the night was a good idea? 

All eyes are on him as he walks up. Sweet Willow is doing her best to soothe an openly weeping Joyce, while Angel stands awkwardly off on the opposite side by the open driver’s seat door. The backseat door on Willow and Joyce’s side is already open, too, the inside a puffed up nest of blankets all in varying shades of pink, openly mocking the car’s exterior. Rupert can’t help but sneak a chuckle as he tucks Buffy into them and secures the seatbelt around her.

Closing the door, he stands back alongside Joyce and Willow as they say their final goodbyes to Angel.

“You’ll drive carefully,” Willow lectures.

“Of course,” Angel says evenly.

“And you’ll call us when you reach your apartment,” Rupert adds. “And again when she wakes up, or if there are any changes at all.”

“Definitely.”

It takes Joyce a few wavering breaths before she can say her piece. When she does, it’s nothing like what Rupert was expecting.

“Wh-whenever Buffy got sick as a little girl,” she began shakily. “I’d make her—“

“Mickey Mouse pancakes,” Angel finishes for her. “She told me once.”

Joyce forces a watery smile. “I think she’d like them.”

Angel gives her a small nod, and with a final incline of his head to all three of them, slid down into the driver's seat and revved the car to life.

As they watch the convertible tear out of the driveway and into the indistinguishable blackness of the night, Rupert wraps his arm around the shoulders of a full on sobbing Joyce, and kicks himself for not having bothered to confirm whether Angel even has a driver’s license.

 


	7. The Dream

Buffy woke, heavy and hurting and warm.

And wet.

No, that wasn’t the right word. The word was “sweaty.” Sweaty, ‘cause she was warm. But why? Why the warm, and why the heavy? The hurting made sense, but what was up with the other two? It felt like she’d had a truckload of flaming bricks unloaded on her, and she’d been flayed and roasted and now the rest of her lay melted to the sheets of the bed beneath her. Wait:

The sheets? The bed?

Whose bed? Where? And how? How did she get from--from There to here--wherever “here” was--in a bed, melting under a truckload of red-hot brick-blankets? Familiar smelling brick-blankets. Of a familiar-smelling bed...

Now would be the time to wig, but after so long of nothing but cold, melting’s kind of nice. She’s too warm to wig. And anyway, she didn’t _want_ to wig, Angel’s here.

Which obviously meant this was a dream. It had to be. There was no way, no possible way. Don’t be an idiot. ( _But what about his friend? The one who had the—_ ) _Don’t be an idiot!_ There was no way. None. Her mind was just screwing with her. She’s finally gone off the rails. The needles and the blood loss and the pain have all taken their toll, and now she’s set up permanent shop inside the very same dream she’s had every night since graduation in order to escape it. In a moment, she’ll go to turn over and back herself into a cold chest, and the strong arms attached to it will puller her back against it. And then, long, wandering fingers will begin stroking her hair, and sweet lips will murmur kisses along her jawline, doing their best to coax her out of sleep. _You’ll be late for class,_ a soft, husky voice will tickle her ear, and she’ll squeal like a child and roll away; playful and frightened. He’ll get it and get serious, then, and his arms will reach out and pull her back to him, wrapping her up tight, tighter; as he presses a kiss against the shell of her ear and _promises_ her that he’s here now, for real. For good. He won’t be going anywhere, not ever again. _Just open your eyes, baby_ … And of course, she will. 

And what will happen after?

_You wake up, in your own bed, alone._

_You’re going to wake up alone There, too. You’re going to open your eyes and be cold and not-quite-dead on that table. You’re going to open your eyes and let them hack you to pieces. You’re going to open your eyes so you can watch them. Just stop lying to yourself and do it. Open them. Do it._

“N—nhhh…”

With a pained groan, Buffy squeezed her eyes shut tighter in protest, the action pulling the muscles in her forehead taut and making the space between her eyes _scream_.

“Shhh…”

A hand settled across her forehead, the thumb lovingly stroking the creases from her brow with its soft whisper-touch. “Shhh, Buffy, you’re alright now. You’re safe. Shhh…” 

She groaned again and shook her head roughly, doing her best to throw him off. She wasn’t gonna fall for it this time. No way.

“No…”

Why did Dream-Angel always want her to wake so badly? Didn’t he know what’d happen once she did? Didn’t he know where she’d be?

With another groan of betrayal, Buffy thrust her head out to the side, successful at last in shaking him off, but scrambling her brain in the process. A pained whimper ground past her gritted teeth as she willed her splitting skull to fuse back together.

Undeterred, Dream-Angel’s hand followed her, soon finding its place again and picking up right where it left off. His other hand curled around her’s and brought it to his lips and began pressing cool kisses along the backs of her stiff fingertips. A low blow, he knew what that did to her…

“Angel…”

She really, honestly hadn’t meant to whine. But there it was, out before she could stop it; a question and a statement; a plea and a wish; a “Here I am” and a “There you are?” all rolled into one, her vision blurring on the end of it. That was it. This was it, time to face the music.

Except it wasn’t.

Angel was still there, seconds after she’d opened her eyes, a big, blurry blob perched beside the bed like a vampire sized, vampire-hawk. Beautiful, even through the thick film of sleep crust clouding her vision.

Buffy brought her free hand up and—finding it heavier than she remembered, thanks to the thick layer of bandages it was wrapped it—let it drop onto her eyes and began scrubbing at them, impatiently, ignoring the pain caused by the dressing’s coarse material dragging across the swollen muscle. She scrubbed, and scrubbed, and scrubbed until Angel’s other hand caught it and stilled her. Gently, but firmly, he maneuvered her hand back down to rest at her side and laid his larger one down on top of it. Buffy frowned, not liking how the gesture made her feel more confined than comforted. Tugging both of her hands out of his hold, she once again pushed the pain aside to bring herself up into a sitting position. Well of Dream Strength completely tapped now, Buffy sagged against the mountain of pillows lining the headboard, exhausted and out of breath, and immediately regretting her show of defiance as the room flipped and her skull split back open. Bile rushed up her throat, prompted by the sudden shockwave of pain, and she retched as it spilled from her mouth.

“Easy…” Angel caught her around the shoulders as she tipped forward, and settled her back against the headboard. Pulling a wet cloth from nowhere, he wiped it across her mouth and chin, gently mopping up the bits of sick she hadn’t been able to choke back down. When he was done, he tossed the rag aside; and let her sink her head into the palm of his other hand as around her, the room went on spinning.

“Easy,” he said again. Then, “How do you feel?”

Buffy snorted. _Like I’m in one of those classic Humiliation Nightmares where, instead of standing naked in front of the whole school, I’m hurling spinach chunks and stomach acid all over myself in front of my ex,_ she wanted to snap, but what came out instead was a wordless, raspy moan.

Great, so she could move on her own (sort of), but her voice was still MIA. Some dream. You can never have everything all at once, can you?

“Does anything hurt?”

She snorted again. If all his questions were going to be this ridiculous, she should at least get in one of her own, right?

Right.

C’mon…easy does it…Just spit it out. _Words_ , not puke, this time.

“A-Angel…wh-where…?”

There. That wasn’t so hard. Her throat felt like she’d just swallowed a fruit peeler, but you know what they say about pain and gain.

“My apartment in L.A.,” he said, his voice now sounding a bit less tense. Was it because she’d finally said something other than his name? She didn’t know what to say to that.

“Oh…”

Tiny and cracked, barely a whimper. God, she hated this! Forget pain and gain, she wasn't speaking again until her real voice came back from hibernation.

“Shhh,” Angel said again, sensing her frustration. Sitting up for a second, he pulled back the mountain of blankets she’d been buried under, then sat back down on the edge of the bed, bringing her into his into his lap so that she now lay her flush against his chest. As always, her head settled in the small dip between his collarbone and his neck and his hand came up to cup her cheek, the cool pad of his thumb smoothing over her burning skin, making Buffy’s eyes go all wet and stingy. She ground her teeth and grimaced, silently begging the tears not to come any further. She was sick to death of crying, it was all she did (all her body allowed her to do) now while she was awake. Why do it while asleep, too?

“Shhh…”

Her breath hitched as Angel began to rock them back and forth. She couldn’t shush, she was shivering, she was sweating. No, she _was_ sweating; now she’s cold again. No, no, no, what happened to the warm? Was she waking up? She can’t be. Not yet. Not yet. She wanted to stay. She wanted Angel. She wanted the warm. Angel shushed her again, cradling her in his arms like a child, running his hands through her hair and down her back. Which hurt. A lot. Her hair and her back and her legs and feet and hands and _skin_ , it all hurt. It was all wet and tender and slimy like the fatty bits of soggy meat that you peel off before biting into the good stuff. Angel doesn’t know that, though, and Buffy didn’t want to tell him, because then he’d look at her and Know and he’d take away his hands and his nonsense shushing and put her down and walk away and she’d look around to find him again, only to find that awful white light shining down on her, blinding her. Waking her…

No!

“Shhh…”

She comes back to herself, to her dream self, to her dream Angel, whose lips were peppering her cheek and temple with featherlight kisses.

“What can I do, Buffy?” Angel said urgently as if he’d sensed her nearly lose him to reality. “Do you want me to leave you alone to rest? Do you want to go back to sleep?”

Yes.

“No.”

Wait, huh?

Leave. He said leave. She knew he was going to eventually, he always does. But he couldn’t yet. Not ever, but especially not now, because once he goes, once he leaves, then—

“Okay…” His arms tightened around her, tucking her further into his chest. “Do you wanna…maybe you wanna, uh, talk?”

“…No.”

Not even if she could. A dumb question, if her eyes weren’t so sore, she’d be rolling them.

“Okay.”

He left it there. And there they stay; him, half sitting on the bed; her, half sitting in his lap. Fidgeting, restless, the confines of his embrace making her heart race. He loosened his hold in response, but it wasn’t enough. She pushed against his chest, steadying herself as she lifted her head from his shoulder; only to stop midway in disgust at the audible slippery sound her skin makes when she peels her sweaty cheek off his shirt collar, reminding her of the inch thick layer of slime she was basting in, and that if she could feel it, he could feel it. That he could smell it, too, probably. Smell her. And still, he held her to him like there was nothing wrong with that, his chivalry making Buffy that much more aware of her own filth.

She unwound herself from all the way him then, slowly, awkwardly having to remain leaning on him a bit so as not to scramble her brains again.

“A-Angel…”

Stupid voice, c’mon, work. _Work_.

She tried to start over, but all that came out was a whispery grunt. Once again, tears of pain and frustration sprung in the corners of her eyes, and she angrily squeezed them back, scrunching up her face in concentration as she tried to wrangle her vocal chords into submission. All the while, Angel held her patiently, his hands smoothing up and down along her arms, coaching her through her stammering.

“C…can I, um…” She coughed a little to buy her voice some time, then started over for a third try. “…A shower?”

There was a long pause after she broke off, as they both were apparently waiting for the other to speak again. Taking Angel’s silence as a sign that her request hadn’t come out as it had in her head, Buffy heaved an exhausted sigh and gathered up her voice to try again, but Angel cut her off just as she went to open her mouth.

“Sure, yeah, absolutely. Of course you can,” he stumbled, embarrassed, as though he was the one who’d taken a full minute to say four lousy words.

With a wince-y smile to perhaps put her at ease, he shifted her up off his lap and got to his feet, then held out both his hands for her to take. Grasping them was next to impossible with all of her fingers bound together inside the homemade casts on both her hands, but Angel, of course, was accommodating. He tugged her gently to her feet, then quickly pressed her against him, his arm coming around her waist to steady her before she had to put all her weight on her legs. But even with Angel as a crutch, standing on her own two feet for the first time in days felt weird. Bad weird; all numb and pins and needle-y, like every bone and muscle below her waist had been swapped out for pipe cleaners and chicken wire (and for all Buffy knew, they could have been). She felt like a baby just learning how to stand on its own. Her legs trembled and twitched uncertainly as Angel helped her step away from the bed, as though they themselves had forgotten how they worked. With his help, Buffy made three wobbly baby steps toward the bathroom before her legs gave out and she went down like a crooked tower of Jenga blocks.

It didn’t hurt as much as it should have, with her knees being mostly numb like the rest of her lower half. Her pride smarted more than anything. Especially when Angel went down with her (much more gracefully), scooped her up like the dead weight she was, and carried her the rest of the way to the bathroom.

He sat her gently on the toilet seat, then stepped back a couple paces, avoiding her as he seemed to consider something. Another bout of combination nausea and exhaustion washed over Buffy as she waited for him to get on with it, and she slumped forward on her forearms and let her head hang limply so that it almost touched her knees. And then Angel was crouched in front of her, tilting her head up by her chin so that they were seeing eye to eye.

Skittish and solemn, Angel pressed his lips together as his eyes darted from her to the other side of the room where the bathtub was, then to her, then back again. Finally, he said,

“Let me…”

A question wrapped in an apology, Buffy could tell as his gaze remained fixed on her, and for the first time she could see past the worry and the anxiety there to find the anger, the hatred, the despair. Not for her— _never_ for her—but _for_ her; that he even had to ask this question at all, that she hadn’t been able to walk to the bathroom on her own, that she had been reduced to this, that They had done this to her and he hadn’t been there to protect her from it, that she hadn’t been able to protect _herself_ from it. He was sorry for all of it, but there was no apology he could give her that would make it all better. There was only this. And so, not trusting herself not to bungle the words she wanted to say around the lump in her throat, Buffy simply inclined her head.

_Of course. Always. Only you._

Angel nodded once to show he understood, then quietly rose to his feet and went over to the tub to turn on the water. He left the room for a short time only to return with towels and what looked like pajamas.

 _Her_ pajamas.

Right, this was a dream. Of course she had clothes at Angel’s place. Of course her dream self had something other than her Happy Sundae pajamas to wear. 

Angel set the items on the sink’s vanity and went over to the tub to sprinkle something in the bathwater, before coming back over to crouch down in front of her. There was a short pause between them just as he reached for her as he silently asked her permission one last time. Silently, she gave it, and he started with the top button of her pajama shirt. Keeping his eyes centered on her face, he quickly undid each of the buttons, before gingerly working off her shirt, mindful of her casts as he carefully slid the sleeves down her arms. He didn’t bat an eye when she immediately brought her arms back to cover her chest the second they were free, but Buffy couldn’t help but feel silly. What was she hiding from him that he hadn’t already seen? What was she hiding from him that dozens of men, maybe even more, hadn’t already…She dropped his gaze then, her chin wobbling against her sternum as she watched Angel’s hands undo the drawstring on her sleep pants, wiggling a little to help him to slide them off.

Steam was already starting to fog up the bathroom by the time Angel was carrying her over to the tub. The heat from the water bit at her as he lowered her into it, but Buffy made sure to smother her protests. Hot was good; she didn’t want any cold, ever. She sat up, ignoring the pronounced ache in her hips and tailbone as she brought her legs up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them; trapping the heat inside as the water continued to run from the faucet. It was past her belly before Angel shut it off.

He started with her back. Buffy nearly jumped out of her skin when she felt the wet cloth touch her skin, unable to stop the pained yelp from breaking past her lips. Angel’s hand stilled instantly and she froze with it. Without turning to look at him, Buffy shook her head for him to continue. It wasn’t until she felt the cloth squeeze perfectly hot water down her back that she allowed herself to breathe again; audibly, a small, strangled sob squeaking out from her chest, unbidden, as Angel ran the washcloth along her back and neck.

At first she tried to muffle it, bending all the way over to press her face into her knees under the guise of giving Angel easier access. It didn’t work. She knew it wouldn’t. Her throat was too tight for her to push down any more tears, it wouldn’t give, and forcing it only made her lungs backfire as the sobs rumbled their way back up, louder on the heels of her labored breaths. She swallowed and heaved, mucus and tears and breathless gasps rolling out of her like a tidal wave, rough and ragged, making her chest burn as it struggled to keep pace with them. She ached. Pain and numbness had drifted away to the back of her senses, orbiting her like satellites; there, but alien, apart from her, for now. Leaving only this, a dull, throbbing ache she could feel from her hair follicles to her bone marrow; a hollow and vacuous void filled with nothing but cold, bone-weary fatigue that she was sure to fall into were it not for the voice in her ear whispering, “Shhh…I know, baby.”

_You can’t know. Shut up. Shut up. Who do you think you are?!_

“You don’t,” she choked out. “You have no idea.”

The washrag ran a heated trail of soapy water up along her back, then back down. “You’re right,” he relented. “I’m sorry.” Genuinely.

Good, that’s better.

Buffy lifted her head from her knees but kept her vision fixed straight ahead as Angel moved on to other parts of her body. Her collarbone and throat, and then her face, clearing away the grit and crust of days and days of tears and drug-induced sleeps as gently as he could. He handled the washrag like he would a fine-tipped paintbrush, dabbing away at the sore spots beneath her eyes with the care of an artist touching up his most prized masterpiece.

He moved on then, to her arms and armpits, and then trailed lightly down her side and over her belly, taking care not to put too much pressure on her ribs and abdomen. And then upward, moving chastely between and beneath her breasts, and Buffy remembered--(a calloused hand cupping her left breast, squeezing it like a ball of silly putty. “Shit, man, you’d think a superpowered chick would have nicer tits than this. I’ve seen high schoolers with better racks.” “Man, would you knock it off so we can finish this up and go to lunch? I’m starving!”)--remembered those early days of Angel’s return from Alcathla’s dimension, when she’d have to go into the shower with him every time to get him to trust the water. How he--still recovering from the damage Hell had done to his memory--had been so curious about her, how she had been torn between her fear of what could happen if she didn’t stop his hands from wandering and her months of longing for those wandering hands to make him stop. Wandering, not calloused. Wandering, not calloused. Wandering. Wanting. Worshipful. Loving. Those would be the hands that would stay. His, not Theirs’.

His hands moved the washrag down to her legs, up and down and around, massaging them gently. The muscles still ached through it, but his touch made it bearable. And then he inched between her legs. He hesitated as he neared the apex, and that was when Buffy broke her one-sided staring contest with the faucet to give him the go-ahead with another stiff nod.

“You’re alright,” she whispered, before turning to look up at the shower head. He went on, brief about it, and once again chaste, but Buffy remembered. Remembered. Remembered.

“How did you find me?” she had to ask to stop herself.

Angel didn’t answer her right away.

“A friend of mine had a vision of you in danger.”

Well, it wasn’t _If I was blind, I’d see you_ , but it would do. “The one from before?”

Angel stood up to pull the plug from the drain. “No,” he said quietly. “A different one.”

Something hitched in her throat, she tried to make it a laugh.

“Look at you, two whole friends.”

“Yeah,” he said, his voice tight with an emotion Buffy couldn’t place. “Lucky me.”

She smiled, almost wanting to turn to him so that he could see it. But something—Buffy would call it pride if she had any left—kept her head facing forward.

“Thank you,” she whispered, her throat clogging up again.

“I had help,” he said. This time, she did turn to look at him, swiveling so fast she could feel her hair slap across his face.

“Willow and Tara did a spell,” he said by way of explanation. “It basically put everyone in the base in a daze for a while, made them oblivious to me as I snuck in and snuck out with you. I brought you back to your house where your mother and Giles patched you up.”

Buffy smiled at that; Mom and Giles, Willow and Tara, and Xander too, assumedly. That they knew she was safe was a nice thought. But what about—

“I also had some help from your—your boyfriend, Riley,” Angel said haltingly. “He showed us where the base was and showed me how to get inside. I couldn’t have done it without him.”

Buffy said nothing, just bowed her head.

“He really cares for you, Buffy.”

Of course he did. This was a dream, after all, and that was what she’d tell herself, even now. But in what universe would Riley ‘Professor Walsh’s Number One Fan’ Finn put his career on the line and stab his mentor in the back for a girl he’d just met.

“Not for long,” she heard herself say. Though true, she hadn’t meant to prolong the subject of her boyfriend while dreaming of her ex-boyfriend.

“What do you mean?” Angel said.

Buffy took a deep breath. This was a dream. This was a dream. She can tell him this because none of this was real. She was dreaming.

“I’m pregnant, Angel,” she said in a cracked whisper, letting out a long breath on the end of the confession. It didn’t matter that this was a dream, he’s still the first person she’s told. And maybe it was because this was a dream, but Buffy couldn’t help but feel good for saying it out loud. Finally. She may never get to see her baby for real, she may never get to tell anyone the truth for real, but at least she was finally able to say the words, even if they were all in her head, and at least she’d been able to tell the one person she knew wouldn’t hate her for it, real or dream.

“I know,” he said.

Of course he did.

“Buffy,” he said seriously, tipping her chin up to look at him. “He didn’t know. Riley didn’t know what the Initiative was going to do to you. Believe me, he’s a good guy. He wouldn’t wish harm on you or your child.”

It took a moment for his words to sink in all the way, but when they did, Buffy’s ears kept playing the word that one word over and over in her head. _Your_. Wait, he didn’t think…

“Angel,” she said, pulling her head out of his hand, rougher than she intended. She took a deep breath, reevaluating that whole judgement-free dream confessor thing. “Angel, this baby isn’t Riley’s.”

A hand settled on the nape of her neck, careful and unaccusing. “What do you mean?”

Buffy swallowed thickly, ducking her head again. “W-we never…He and I never actually…”

She broke off then, as another sob came bubbling up her throat. She let it come, knowing she wouldn’t be able to speak around the lump, and like her earlier confession, this was something she had to get out before she woke up.

“This baby doesn’t have a father, Angel,” she wept, composure and pride thrown to the wind as she picked her head up and locked eyes with him. “There was only this one guy in the beginning of the school year, but that was months ago, and the doctor says I’m only twelve weeks, and I—“

“Twelve weeks,” Angel cut her off. She couldn’t place the tone of his voice. It was funny-sounding and far away. “Three months. Three months ago, that would put you at—“

“When Riley and I were just starting out,” she finished for him. “Thanksgiving. We weren’t even really dating then.”

“Thanksgiving,” Angel said, his tone dull and indecipherable. He went rigid, pulling his hand away from her. 

Buffy felt herself grow cold inside the tub of draining lukewarm bathwater. Her limbs went limp and numb, the pain in her back and hips exploded and died, and the void was here again. She had been wrong. She had been wrong, and now he couldn’t even bear to touch her. She had been wrong, and now there was no one to pull her back.

“Please,” she whimpered. “Angel, I don’t know what I’m gonna do. I don’t know—I don’t know anything—I just, I peed on a stick a month ago—a-and I-I-I-I couldn’t tell Giles or Mom or Riley or anyone because I don’t know how it happened. Angel, I’m three months pregnant and I have no idea how!”

It doesn’t feel good to get it out. She’d been wrong about that, too. Angel sat before her, blank-faced and stony, his eyes glazed and unseeing. Buffy waited an eternity for him to say something, anything, her heart pounding out of her chest as every silent second that ticked past pushed her closer to the void.

“Please,” she shivered. Not even sure what she was begging for. For him not to hate her? For him to respond at all? For him to somehow have a solution, something, anything to reassure her that there was nothing about her baby to be afraid of. That’s what he did, right? That’s what dreams were supposed to do, right?

“Please, Angel,” she wept. “I-I know this is all my problem, not yours’, b-but if there was some way you could—you’ve already done so much, but I—I’m gonna be all alone soon, once Mom and Riley and everyone else find out. Angel, I just wanna know—I love this baby no matter what, but I’m scared. I’m so scared of where he came from— _how_ he came. Not knowing, it’s killing me, please—!”

“Shhh…” he said, his arms coming around her in a cool embrace as he pulled her out of the tub and into his lap, soaking wet. “Shhhh…”

He said nothing else but held her as she continued to sob into his chest, rocking her like a child as he combed his fingers through her wet hair. Caught between his soft crooning and her own suppressed hysteria, Buffy lost all sense of space and time around her. She didn’t feel Angel stand and carry her back over to the toilet seat. She didn’t feel him towel her dry and dress her in a set of clean pajamas. She wasn’t aware of anything until she saw herself being lowered back down into Angel’s bed, and her eyes snapped over to him, panicked.

“Sleep, love,” he said, cradling her head in both hands as he pressed a lingering kiss to her forehead. “Everything will be better when you wake up.”

She grimaced and shook her head. It was always near the end when her dreams of him turned cruel. Buffy struggled against him. _How can you say this to me?_ she wanted to scream. _You know where I’m going to wake up, and you know you won’t be there. You’re punishing me. Why are you punishing me?_ But her throat was too tight to speak. Once again denied her voice, she continued to shake her head wildly up at him, her eyes bulging and watering as she forced them to stay open despite their heaviness.

“I promise,” he insisted, thumbing away her freshly sprung tears. “I’ll be here when you wake up. Just close your eyes.”

Figures he’d get her with that.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'know that Tumblr post I made about "The Scene"? This was it. Boy howdy was it a bitch to write.


	8. The Gift

And lo, here They find Themselves again.

There have been few instances throughout Their vast existence where They have been in disharmony; for They were They, and They were One, and as such, there was little room for discord when before Them stretched the perpetual helix of eternity and They were the other’s only true equal. As such, the number of disagreements there have been between Them could fit onto one human hand. But if there was ever any cause for discord between Them, without fail, it always came back to these infernal _creatures_.

There exists an old proverb for occasions such as these; _Give a mortal a spool of thread, and they shall attempt to weave the universe._

Or, to put it in cruder terms, _I told you so_.

Yes, it seemed They found Themselves burdened with the task of Telling the Other So once every quarter millennium, give or take a few decades. And to that point, one day They simply must remember to ask the Powers if being forced to revisit the same lesson every couple of centuries was the opportunity cost of Their existence spanning half of all Creation.

But They digress.

“Why have you come before us, Lower Being?”

The Other sent Them a bald look of displeasure, a silent reminder of the previous time this one had called upon Them, as if They could forget (as if _They_ were the forgetful party here). They ignored Them. Still blinded by misguided sentiment for these foolish creatures and their petty, fleeting little melodramas, the Other couldn’t yet see the headache Their ill-advised meddling had brought Them.

The warrior was brief (This, at least They could appreciate about him).

“The Slayer is pregnant.”

They scoffed and turned to the Other to see if They had realized it yet. The Other was unfazed, but not yet irritated. Their patience with ones such as these never ceased to astound Them.

“Old news,” said the Other. “What of it?”

The warrior gaped, apparently flabbergasted that They did not share his astonishment at the reveal of these entirely foreseeable circumstances.

“You said you were going to take back the day!” he growled.

Growled! At Them! Did the Other see now, the wisdom in that old adage?

They shot the Other a look.

 _Do You remember now what happens when You indulge these lessers?_ _How many more times will You force Us to endure this?_

Perhaps wisely, the Other did not meet Their glare. Nevertheless, They could feel Their Other’s patience for the warrior beginning to wane.

“And so we did,” the Other said obliquely. “We ask, again, what of it?”

“She’s _pregnant_!”

Again, the Other ignored the glare about to burn a hole through the back of Their head. Were it not for present company, They would will it so, just to ensure the lesson stuck this time around. What was that odd mortal expression about hard heads and soft buttons?

The Other’s tone grew weary. “We fail to see how the subject of the Slayer’s fertility is of any concern to Us.’”

The warrior hissed, his demon’s true form snapping to the forefront of his visage. “Don’t play dumb!” he barked. Lucky for him the Other had such a high tolerance for insolence. “How in the Hell could she be pregnant if you swallowed the day, if it was meant to never have happened?! How can we have conceived a child if you actually followed through—“

“Not even ones such as We may meddle in matters of creation,” They snapped, long past ready to call this meeting to close and cast the Warrior out of their realm, indefinitely, minus a few appendages in return for his indiscretion. Naturally, the Other stayed Their hand.

The Other spoke next. “As We told you at the time you made your request; what is done cannot be undone.”

Understanding settled over the Warrior at a human’s pace, banishing all traces of bluster and consternation as it did. He faltered.

“She-she doesn’t remember,” he murmured, broken, the shamefaced and forlorn expression on his now human face bracing Them for a new low in idiocy.

“Please, is there any way you could restore her memories?”

Sure enough, on this, the Warrior could not bear to disappoint.

Past frustration at this point, Their reply came forth in short, undignified grunts. “What is done. Cannot. Be. Undone,”

This time, Their ungraciousness begat no reprimand from the Other, whose own inexhaustible patience continued to dwindle the more they were forced to take of this fool’s theatrics.

“That was the trade you made when We agreed to turn back the day,” The Other explained sternly, but not unkindly. “Her memories for her life.”

The Warrior fell to his knees.

“But that—? That’s just so…unfair! She didn’t even agree to the trade, neither of us did! If we’d had any way of knowing, we— _I_ —never would have—! Please, there must be something. _She_ deserves _something!_ ”

Neither of Them deigned to dignify that with a response. 

“The Powers would mean for you both to take this as a gift,” the Other informed him.

Again, They scoffed at the Other’s indulgence, They could not understand the point in wasting the energy to inform the Warrior of this. There was no way he, in all his self-deluded arrogance would be capable of understanding the depth and magnitude of the Powers’ generosity.

“A _gift?!_ ” the Warrior cried, glaring up at them in horror and renewed fury.

_Yes, you cretin. A gift. The Powers have seen fit to grace you with the impossible, and yet here you sit before Us groveling and mewling like the animal you are as though They’d branded you and the Slayer with the Mark of Cain!_

“You heard correctly,” the Other intoned, now almost half as bored with this whole debacle as They.

“A gift she can’t even remember?” the Warrior demanded. “A gift that nearly got her killed?! A gift that’s brought her nothing but confusion and misery, that—“

“A gift,” the Other’s voice boomed, mercifully cutting the Warrior off mid-rant. “Born from your love, the profane yet purposeful love between a Slayer and her natural enemy. A souvenir, crafted from the remnants of the destiny you chose to forsake. A reward, bequeathed to the _two of you_ in exchange for the sacrifices you made on that day, for those which you’ve made in the past, and for those you will make in the days to come.

“A gift,” the Other said again with a sly smirk, one They knew all too well. “For which the Powers are not of the mind to accept a renunciation. It is rare for Them to bestow so great a blessing on the same unworthy being twice. Give thanks for Their bounty, and take care not to squander it a second time.”

And with a jaded flick of the Other’s wrist, the Warrior was gone; never to darken their Hall again, thank the Powers.

They turned to face the Other, Their own sly smirk twisting up Their mouth, to which the Other bared Their teeth in warning.

“Don’t say it.”

 

* * *

  

“So that’s it, huh? Wham, bam, freakish, improbable pregnancy, ma’am.”

From across the room, Angel growled. 

“Actually,” Wesley added with an awkward chuckle. “Given that Angel was human at the time, the result of his and Buffy’s, er—reconciliation—is quite probable. In fact…”

Angel growled harder. Wesley flushed.

“…Er, that is, I mean to say—“

“Could you guys be serious?” Angel snapped, pushing himself out of his desk chair to resume his harried pacing across the floor. Wesley and Cordelia exchanged a look, daring the other to be the first to attempt damage control. Cordelia broke contact first with a roll of her eyes, and refused to respond to Wesley’s small huff of exasperation. No way was she jumping on that grenade disguised as a frazzled, centuries old vampire about to stomp a hole through the floor of his office. Situations like these called for an expert.

“Angel,” Wesley began in his overly prim Watcher voice. “Please, don’t think Cordelia and I aren’t taking this new development seriously. I-it’s just, well, we aren’t exactly equipped to deal with anything like this, either, and well, oftentimes when people find themselves in unfamiliar territory, they have the tendency to resort to humor—however, ern, distasteful—in order to save face. It was all in good fun, you realize…”

Wesley trailed off into an unintelligible stammer as he fumbled to find something actually useful to say. Cordelia scoffed.

“I still don’t get what the big deal is,” she tried next. “I mean of all the totally crappy-slash-weird things that have happened to either of you over the years, isn’t this, like the one time where the freaky thing is actually good?”

Not that unplanned pregnancies could be called “good,” per se, but worse things have definitely happened, especially to Angel and Buffy.

Angel froze in his pacing, then and gave her a hard, disbelieving look. “You know, Cordelia,” he snarled. “You’d think as someone who just got through their own surprise supernatural pregnancy, you’d be showing a little more empathy.”

Okay, ouch.

“But that’s exactly my point,” Cordelia pressed on, for the moment choosing to ignore the horrible sting of the memory of waking up to find herself eight months pregnant with a nest of evil demon baby eggs. “I got knocked up by a one-night stand who turned out to be an evil monster using me as a nest for his monster progeny, _Buffy_ got knocked up by the man she loves. And yeah, okay, out of wedlock pregnancies are never ideal, but now you both get to raise a cute little baby with the love of your lives. Aside from the fact that Buffy doesn’t remember actually making said baby, I’m really not seeing the downside here.”

Again, Angel’s look was disbelieving.

“That isn’t enough of a downside?!” he barked. “On top of everything else she’s been through, now she has to deal with having a child with a—a—“

“A vampire,” Wesley finished unhelpfully. Angel’s head slumped and he plopped back down into his desk chair. Cordelia came around to sit opposite him atop the desk.

“Are you sure all this ‘Woe is She’ bellyaching is really about Buffy?” she asked softly.

Angel didn’t answer. Time to try a different tactic then. Cordelia bent over and set her hand on Angel’s shoulder. Thankfully, he must have gotten all of his snarls out because he didn’t bother to shake her off.

“Do you really think Buffy won’t want the baby if she finds out it’s yours?” she asked gently.

This time he did shake her off, his head snapping up. “It’s not that,” he said in a small, anguished voice. “It’s—it’s a lot of…I left her to give her her best shot at a normal life, and now this, on top of everything else she’s been through, it’s just—“

“Your great, big quasi-romantic gesture’s been shot straight to Hell?” Cordelia said sympathetically.

Or maybe not sympathetically enough, judging by the pained look Wesley and Angel give each other. Whoops.

“Yeah,” Angel whispered in a dull voice, before dropping his head again.

“Angel…” Cordelia started, then stopped herself, letting the one word hang uselessly in the air in front of her as she realized she had nothing to say to that. Well, nothing good, anyway. There was plenty she wanted say, but despite what Angel might choose to believe, she really was trying to work on that whole empathy thing. She turned to Wesley for help.

“Angel,” Wesley began, coming around to Angel’s side and crouching down in front of him. “You of all people should know you can’t control anything to do with the Slayer, least of all her destiny. For as long as she lives, she’ll never lead a normal life. Unfortunately, the demands of her duty forbid her such a privilege. There’s nothing you nor anyone else can do to ameliorate that for her. Her lot in life is what it is.”

Hey, no fair! That’s totally what she was gonna say. How come Wesley’s allowed to spill the hard truth without getting glowered at?

“All that being said,” Wesley continued. “Though her life will never be quote unquote ’normal’ there’s no reason to suggest it can’t still be fulfilling, happy even. I have to say I agree with Cordelia. Personally, I can’t think of anything more joyous for either of you than the prospect of raising a child—a miracle child at that—with the person you love most in the world. On top of that, given how distraught you say Buffy is at not having any idea as to the identity of her child’s father, don’t you think she’ll be relieved to know it’s you?”

No one said anything for a long moment as Cordelia and Wesley watched Angel consider Wesley’s words. When he finally spoke, his head was still half ducked, his face frightened and hopeful. He reminded Cordelia of a little child tiptoeing down the steps on Christmas morning, unsure whether he’s going to find any presents or coal under the tree.

“You really think, if she knew, Buffy c-could want…?”

“What do you mean, “if,”” Cordelia demanded, harsher than she meant. “Are you just not going to tell her?!”

Wesley cleared his throat.

Right, okay.

“Once the shock wears off, that is,” she amended. “I don’t even understand why this is even a question, Angel, of course she’ll want to have a baby with you, the girl’s crazy about you!”

“Once the shock wears off,” Angel repeated numbly. Then, shaking Cordelia off, he stood again and slouched blindly past the her and Wesley over to the window by the filing cabinets, to stare blankly out into the smoggy, moonless night.

“This wasn’t what I wanted for her,” Cordelia heard him mumble to himself. “She was supposed to have more…”

Knowing a lost cause when she saw one, Cordelia sent a _Forget it. It's hopeless_  look to Wesley, and led him through the door of the office, tactfully shushing his weak protests. Wesley hadn’t been around long enough to get this yet, but when Angel got like this it was best to just put a mug of blood on his desk and leave him to it. Last she checked, there was still some AB neg left in his fridge. Cordelia made a mental note to heat it up for him before she left.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've gotten a few questions about this, so in case it wasn't clear, the first section of this chapter is narrated by the male Oracle. The "Other" whom he is so exasperated with is the female Oracle. I liked the idea of the Oracles not really ascribing to a gender binary, so instead I had them refer to themselves and one another as "They" and "Other." Hope that clears up some confusion!


	9. The Reality

It was the smell that did her in this time.

Rich and buttery and sweet, it wafted through the fog of Buffy’s half-conscious mind like the half-real ghost of a long lost childhood memory, bringing with it a rumbling in her belly so insistent that her first thought upon being pulled from her sleep was that Seamonkey had finally grown a pair of legs to kick her with. But then the rumbling became a throbbing that left her belly and shot straight down to her legs, and then up to her arms, and then her back and hips and to the rest of her, as blunt and sharp and cloying as ever. A dull, heavy ache for some reason reminding her of that time she’d fallen off the Thompson family mausoleum while on patrol one night and landed flat on her back on the concrete walkway; only a million times worse, because where she was now, there would be no Giles to help her up and walk her back to his place for triage over a cup of cocoa, followed by a Watcher-mandated power nap in the guest room before school. Here, there was only Them, and the reminder of that made Buffy hurt too much to even bother guessing at what They could possibly be doing to her now. She squeezed her already shut eyes tighter, willing herself back into the peaceful oblivion of the dreamless sleep her stupid stomach had dragged her out of. But it was no use.

That smell…That stupid, delicious, stupidly delicious smell, making her belly rumble, her body throb, and her baby kick. Making her marvel at the fact that she was actually hungry. Hungry-hungry. Really, _really_ hungry. Hungry in a way she hasn’t been since before Them. No, longer than that, hungry in a way she hasn’t been since she first found out she was pregnant. Hungry enough to eat until her body said stop. Hungry enough to give in to a craving and not care if it made her look suspicious. Hungry enough to not worry about bloating or putting on weight or waiting on pins and needles to start showing. Hungry enough for her mouth to water at just the thought of whatever it was at the end of that wonderful, amazing scent. Hungry enough to give in to her restlessness and abandon her pursuit of the blissful void of sleep. Hungry enough to push herself up out of bed. Hungry enough to open her eyes.

…And see for herself that this wasn’t There. This was here. Here as in Angel’s apartment, where she’d been dreaming. _What_ she’d been dreaming, minus Angel. Did that mean she was still asleep, then? Buffy didn’t get how you could go to sleep in a dream and wake up in the exact same dream, in the exact same spot (minus one very important detail), but in her experience, weirder things have happened. Moving on.

Sitting up was an even greater challenge than it had been before, without Angel there to help her. There were, once again, a million sweaty blankets piled on top of her, which together with her splinted hands and the fleece pajamas clinging to her clammy skin, had her weighted down and twisted up for a good five minutes. By the time she managed to throw off the covers, she was dripping with sweat and close to vomiting from dizziness. She bent forward, using her hands to brace herself, ignoring the twinge in her wrists and the burning in her throat as she willed her head to screw itself back on and for any bile sitting around in there to hurry up and get on with, with the side hope that if Dream Angel hadn’t minded her getting sick all over his bed before, he’d let it slide a second time. Thankfully, this turned out to be a non-issue, as everything inside her stayed down, allowing Buffy to continue on with her mission.

She swung her legs over the edge of the bed slowly, reintroducing her swollen feet to the impossible as of late task of bearing weight little by little. Angel wasn’t here to catch her if she fell this time, and Buffy had the sinking feeling that if she fell again, there’d be no getting up until either he or They came for her, and honestly, neither option appealed to her. She had to do this for herself this time. She had to.

She stood carefully, using the nightstand next to the head of Angels’ bed for balance. Her legs wobbled disconcertingly, and Buffy waited until they settled to a steady tremor before lifting up from the nightstand. Now supporting her own weight, she stumbled once, twice, then fell into the wall and crashed to the floor, bringing a framed picture down with her.

Silence.

Had there been noise before? Buffy had been so focused on the smell, she hadn’t noticed if there had been any, but as she slumped over on the floor—exhausted, the pain in her hips and feet causing spots to cloud her vision—she could have sworn she heard something stop. What was it? There had been a shuffling? Something sizzling? The sound of someone cooking? And now, footsteps.

Mad, urgent, pounding, as whoever it was—him or Them—got closer and closer and…

“…Buffy?”

Him. They never called her anything. Of course it’s him. This is his place. His apartment. He brought her here. He wouldn’t let Them—but this was a dream, and she’s certainly had weirder, more horrible dreams than—

“What are you doing out of bed,” he said, half asking, half scolding. Buffy uncurled herself and opened her eyes just in time to see Angel bend down and scoop her up and prepare to walk her back toward his bed.

“No!” she said abruptly. He stopped, giving her a startled look as he waited for her to explain.

“What is that?”

He thinks she meant the dish towel slung across his shoulder—the shoulder her head was resting against—but she was talking about the smell. Same difference, it turned out.

“Oh,” he said, as he settled her back against the headboard. He looked away from her, back in the direction he’d come, sheepish. “I was going to make you breakfast in bed.”

“No,” she said again, quicker this time. She’s awake now, and sure it hurts, but if she lays back down she’ll end up going to sleep again, and who knows where she’ll wake up next time. But the disheartenedlook on Angel’s face made her reconsider her choice of words. “I mean, n-not in bed. I’m not tired anymore.”

She was, actually. But not in that way. Though it had failed miserably, the attempt at standing on her own had made her itchy. She’d had enough of being horizontal for now.

“Please, Angel,” she pouted, in that way she knew he wouldn’t be able to resist. “Just for a little while? You can even carry me there if it’ll make you feel better.” Wherever ‘there’ was. Did Angel even have a kitchen?

Stupid question. You couldn’t make food that smelled that good on a hot plate.

With an indulgent nod, Angel swept her back up and carried her the short distance to his small kitchen, and sat her down in one of the chairs at the table next to the fridge, then went back to the stove. At a loss for what to say to him now, Buffy took a minute to sit back in her chair and take in her new surroundings.

This was all surprisingly domestic for Angel. Even more so than the apartment he’d had back when she’d first met him, before the mansion. That place had certainly felt like Angel, all minimalist and bare necessities (which of course had to include his dozens of musty, hundred year old books) but this place—with its full-sized refrigerator and real food cooking on the stove, and bowls and cups and dishtowels sitting up in the shelves above the oven, and table with _four_ seats sitting around it instead of just one, or none at all—felt like Angel’s _home_. It was then that something occurred to Buffy.

“This isn’t a dream at all, is it?” she whispered in a voice she knew he could hear loud and clear over the popping and sizzling coming from the stove. “This is really happening.”

Again, there was a tell-tale silence as Angel once again left his post to come over to her side. She felt his hand settle over her shoulder and heard the air move as he bent down to crouch at eye level with her.

She didn’t turn to meet him, instead continuing to stare fixedly at one of the shallow grooves along the second hand table. Her throat burned, as the rest of her worked to catch up to what her mind had already worked out to be true.

“You came for me,” she said tonelessly.

A cool hand brushed back a few sweat-damp hairs from her forehead.

“Always.”

“And then you brought me here?”

“Giles insisted.”

She whipped around to face him then. “ _Giles?!_ ” Of all people. How? Why?

Angel blanched, a speck of hurt flashing in his eyes before he averted them. “Just until you’re well again. Then you can go.”

“Oh…”

Right. Of course.

“My mother knows I’m here?”

Angel nodded. “She was there when Giles told us his plan,” he hesitated. “She…was—is—really worried about you, Buffy. They both are. You should call them now that you’re up and about. They’ll want to hear from you.”

Now it was Buffy’s turn to blanch. She shifted in her seat and found the groove she’d been staring at before and began to trace it distractedly. Talk to Mom. It’d been so long—longer than normal since she’d done that. Before she’d found out she was pregnant, Buffy had made an effort to make it home at least once every two weeks for dinner. But ever since…it felt…smothering to talk to her, to be around her, to think about her. About what she’d say once Buffy told her the truth. About how it would feel to be lying by omission to her face once again, about the most important thing that’s happened to her since her Calling. There’s no way Buffy can face her now, not with this whole other thing between them too. She can’t. And then there was Giles, a whole other can of worms she wasn’t ready to even acknowledge, much less open…

“Maybe later,” she said, her hand unconsciously drifting from the table to her side and slipping beneath her shirt to her belly. The shock of her own clammy hand flush against the flesh of her stomach made her realize what she was doing, and falling into a sudden spring of euphoria, Buffy began to rub that spot in earnest.

_We did it, Seamonkey. We made it out! Those creeps didn’t end up taking you away from me after all. Our Angel saved us._

Lost in the sudden whirlwind of elation and profound gratitude, Buffy didn’t feel the pair of eyes on her until she caught Angel’s staring from out of her peripheral, his face plastered over with some weird combination of wonder and woe. He was almost grinning. Would have been, if not for the small frown currently beating out the shadow of joy for control of the surface. Buffy’s heart sank.

“I told you, didn’t I?” she said miserably, her hand still roaming over her stomach. “While I thought I was still sleeping, I told you about the…”

She trailed off, now having gone from elated to furious with herself for even bringing it up as the reminder of how “Dream Angel” had reacted to the news reared its ugly head. _Stupid!_

She dropped her gaze. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he practically snarled as his hands tightened around her shoulders. Buffy winced, gaping at him in surprise. He didn’t seem to notice her as he pressed on.

“You have nothing to apologize for, Buffy,” he said, his face and voice both rigid with anger and desperation as he gritted out the words. “Do you hear me? _Nothing_. You’ve done nothing to deserve—You don’t owe me or anyone else anything, least of all an apology, do you understand?”

Dumbfounded by the unrestrained ferocity in his reaction, Buffy nodded mutely and shifted up her shoulders a bit to get him to get the point and ease up. With an apologetic flinch, he acquiesced, then pushed her chair out further so that he could kneel in front of her.

“Buffy,” he began again, calmer and more careful this time. “I know this pregnancy took you by surprise. I know you’re feeling frightened and out of your depth and a whole host of other emotions I can’t even begin to fathom right now, but I want you to know that you’re not alone. I’m here, whatever you decide, whatever you need, I’m here.”

He pulled her to him, then, wrapping her up in his strong arms and stroking his hand softly down the back of her head as his words took their time setting in. Buffy didn’t cry, but she felt like she should be; for those words; the words she’s been so afraid to long for, the words she’d never expected to come from anyone in her life, not even from Willow or Giles, and least of all from Angel, who’d left her so long ago with nothing but a mournful parting glance. But there had been a time between them when she would have expected this kind of speech from him, from her Angel, who was always there to listen, and who always seemed to know exactly what she needed to hear when she needed to hear it most. In that moment, Buffy felt something break inside of her, but in a way that felt surprisingly good; like deep in her chest, there was this rusty, old door with a busted latch, and it was creaking open bit by bit, but just enough.

She buried her face in the cool patch of skin between his neck and his shoulder and let the not-tears come. God, she’s missed this. Missed him, so very, very much.

“Thank you,” she whispered into the crook of his neck, and felt his arms squeeze her back in response.

They stayed like that for long enough, until they both remembered the food, and Angel eased her back into her seat and scooted her back up to the table, before returning to his place at the stove.

“Are you hungry?” he asked rhetorically, with his back still to her.

Buffy grinned to herself. “It was the smell of the food that woke me up. I got out of bed to come find out what it was.”

“A surprise,” Angel answered. Even without looking at him, she could hear the small, cryptic smile in his voice. She grinned wider. Even this, she had missed.

“A tasty one?”

“You’ll have to be the judge of that,” he said, reaching for the mixing bowl on the counter beside the stove and pouring the contents into the frying pan. As the pan crackled with the sound of the sweet mixture beginning to cook, the air around them thickened with that familiar rich, buttery aroma that had roused Buffy from sleep in the first place. Having some idea now of what Angel’s surprise must be, she leaned back into her chair and inhaled a long, greedy whiff.

“Okay, so I know we were gone a lot longer than we said we would be, but the store was packed, and traffic was a bitch, and anyway, we managed to get everything on our list here, except—Buffy!”

Buffy and Angel had both started at the sound of the intruders coming to join them in the kitchen. A quick look over her shoulder matched the face with the recognized voice, and Buffy bit back a groan. If she hadn’t already been sure this wasn’t a dream, the presence of Cordelia and Wesley ( _Wesley?!_ ) in Angel’s kitchen clinched it. No way would her Angel Dreams ever include them.

They were carrying shopping bags. Or rather, Wesley was carrying shopping bags. Lots of them. The poor guy was weighed down like a pack mule. Coming in behind Cordelia, he wheezed a tiny, “Hello, again, Buffy,” then sagged against the doorjamb, his cardigan and glasses all rumpled and askew, while Queen C dangled a single shopping bag from her index finger. Typical. Buffy didn’t know whether to laugh or scowl.

“You’re up just in time,” Cordelia said breezily as she came further into the room. She dropped her little bag off in the chair beside Buffy and motioned for Wesley to follow suit, before taking the seat across from her. “We just got back with all your stuff.”

“‘My’ stuff…” Buffy said, puzzled.

Cordelia snorted. “Well, obviously, Angel’s vampire den isn’t exactly girl friendly, and seeing as how you two are going to be shacking up for a bit while you’re Howard Hughes-ing it, he asked me and Wes to pick up some stuff you might need.”

Buffy glanced up at Angel for confirmation, and he responded with an eye roll and a muted, world-weary sigh that told her it was less a request on his part and more a “suggestion” on hers. Still, the girl’s heart was in the right place, so Buffy decided to let it go.

“Thanks,” she said in a small voice, and reached for the small bag Cordelia had had with her when she came in.

Double-stuffed Oreos. Nice. Angel definitely wouldn’t have had those in stock.

“Really, thanks,” she said again, meaning it this time.

Cordelia smiled knowingly at her, then reached for one of the other bags the still wheezing Wesley had dropped off at her feet before plopping into the vacant chair behind where Angel was standing at the stove.

“We also got you some hair ties and things,” she said pulling three brightly colored packets of elastics and scrunchies out of the bag and setting them on the table. “Plus a blow dryer and a curling iron, and some shampoo and conditioner, so that you don’t have to use whatever disgusto, old man kind Angel uses.”

Angel made a tiny noise of protest at that, which everyone else ignored. Cordelia pulled something else out of the bag.

“I wasn’t sure what brand you used, but I hope L’Oreal is okay.”

Buffy stared, open-mouthed at the package, scandalized.

“ _I don’t dye my hair, Cordelia!_ ”

The brunette patted her hand. “I know, honey, neither do I.”

Buffy gaped up at Angel, who kept his back turned to her and remained conspicuously silent. Fine. That was fine. Whatever.

“What else,” she said wearily, having never realized until this exact moment how easy it was to go from grateful to mortified in under twenty-five seconds.

“Oh you know, body wash, more first aid stuff, ‘cause we were running low even before you showed up. And some extra sleep clothes, ‘cause even though your mom packed you clothes, you’re obviously not going to be going out much while you still look like that.”

She gestured at Buffy and swung her hand in an up and down motion. Buffy felt her face heat up, for the first time since waking up realizing what she must look like, her eyes all swollen red and bloodshot from all the crying. The rest of her all cut up and bruised and sweaty, the worst of it mercilessly covered up by her old dancing cupcake pajamas she’s had since eighth grade and purposefully left at home. God, there was no telling what other horrendous middle school rejects Mom had packed her. To say nothing of her hair—which, thank God her arms and hands were still tied to invisible anvils, because it made resisting the urge to reach up and feel out the state of her bed head that much easier. She’ll just have to content herself with the certainty that right now she looked like she belonged the front cover of Bag Lady Illustrated, she can’t give Cordelia the satisfaction.

“Cordy…” Angel said warningly. She blinked innocently around at them all, giving them her old, ‘ _What I_ was _being nice’_ face.

“But I’m sure you’ll get your color back soon,” Cordelia said with a placating smile. “Speaking of which, I also picked you up some night cream and moisturizer. Oh, and this special bath formula that’s supposed to help with aches and skin abrasions and stuff.”

She grabbed for the last bag.

“Ginger tea, because it’s supposed to help with nausea.” She set the box of tea on the table, then reached inside and pulled out the very last item. Buffy’s heart clenched upon seeing what it was, and not in a good way.

“And this, because it was so cute I just couldn’t resist!”

A three pack of onesies, all three animal themed. The first, mint green with a little frog emblazoned on the lapel. The second, the same, except it came in a soft cream color and had a bright yellow duckling in place of a frog. And the last one, baby blue with a little blue fish. Buffy wanted to scream. If only there was a Hellmouth beneath Angel’s kitchen that would open up and swallow her whole in that precise moment.

The look on her face must have really been telling, because after a beat of silence, there was Wesley’s quiet, “Cordelia I told you we oughtn’t have presumed…,” muttered under Angel’s thin, menacing

“ _Cordelia_.”

Buffy didn’t even have to look up at him standing over her to know that spatula he was brandishing at his assistant was about to turn into a murder weapon. She squeezed the hand rested on her shoulder.

“Buffy, I’m sorry,” Cordelia said, the most genuine Buffy had ever heard her. “I honestly wasn’t trying to—Well, you know by now that Angel’s told us everything. But that’s good, see, because here at the office we help the helpless, and, well, you’re obviously not that given how many times you’ve saved the world and all, but that’s great because that just makes our job so much easier!”

“What Cordelia is trying to say, Buffy,” said Wesley, coming over to stand up at Buffy’s side and setting a hand on her upper arm. “Is that Angel isn’t alone in wanting to see you up and on your feet again. The world has a vested interest in seeing its Slayer back to full ability, and as your former Watcher, I fully intend to see you get there.”

Above her, she could hear Angel breathe a long, exasperated sigh, and wondered to herself how many of Cordelia’s pep talks and Wesley’s pompous monologues he’s had to suffer through since bringing them in. She squeezed his hand again. They meant well, she knew. And if she could see it, she knew Angel could too. In a weird way, Buffy supposed these two self-obsessed outcasts were good for him. If nothing else, he could use their self-confidence as a model every now and then.

“Thanks, guys,” she said, giving Cordelia a small smile of forgiveness. “Really, it means a lot.” 

“Indeed,” Wesley said primly. He turned to Angel. “And now, perhaps, breakfast?”

“In a minute,” Angel grumbled, returning to the stove.

While they waited for Angel to finish up with breakfast, Buffy helped Cordelia sweep all the items she’d bought off the table and back into their respective bags, then watched as Cordelia took them back into Angel’s room and Wesley got out the plates and dishes. She’d be lying if she said it didn’t bother her more than a little that they were so familiar with Angel’s home when for so long, Buffy had been the only person allowed such an intimate look into the solitary vampire’s life. But she forced herself to remember that this was good. He had people. There had been so many nights this past summer where she couldn’t help but think of him braving the big, bad city all on his own, with no one to talk to, to laugh and joke with, to visit with him, to make sure he remembered to eat and to shower. That had been Buffy’s job in Sunnydale, even after he’d recovered from Hell. She had been his only company, his only comfort. Things were obviously different now, but not at all in a bad way. Buffy was happy for him. This was what she’s always wanted for him. People. Friends, aside from just her. Even if his new social circle happened to consist of none other than Cordelia Chase and Buffy’s wannabe ex-Watcher.

This was good.

No, this was really, really good.

Somewhere in the span of her musing, Angel had come to fetch her clean plate and replace it with a full helping of breakfast. And well, to say the reveal of his surprise was unexpected would be inaccurate, because she’d kind of figured from the smell that it was pancakes. But not _these_ pancakes. Her throat tightened.

“Angel, you remembered.”

Mickey Mouse pancakes; Buffy can remember telling him about these on one of their post-slayage walks home. How when she was a little girl, home sick from school her mom would make her Mickey Mouse pancakes and bring them up to her on the Princess Ariel breakfast tray she’d begged Daddy to buy her at Disneyland that one time. How Mom would always make sure to put a little vase with a single sunflower in it on the tray to make the whole thing extra special. How she’d make Mickey’s ears out of little mini chocolate pancakes and use a sausage patty for his nose and a strawberry with a line of chocolate syrup for his mouth.

No offense to Mom, but Angel’s rendition knocked her’s out of the park, simply by measure of artistic quality. Put plainly, the pancake looked like a drawing. Like Angel had traced an honest to God drawing of Mickey Mouse’s face with the pancake mix. (And for all his skill at drawing, he may very well have.) It felt weird to call food beautiful, but Angel’s pancakes looked like something taken from one of those You Can’t Possibly Recreate This At Home cooking shows. Only he had, and it looked so amazing, Buffy almost didn’t want to eat it.

Almost. She was only human after all, and despite all those diet advice articles said, there was nothing fulfilling about merely staring at food, especially not food as tantalizingly delicious-looking as this.

“It took me a couple of tries to get it right,” Angel said, almost apologetically. He was standing over her now, anxiously waiting for her to take the first bite. “Which is why it took so long.”

“Well I’m sure me falling out of bed and disrupting the process didn’t help much,” said Buffy good-naturedly. “Angel this looks incredible!”

“Taste it,” he said, nudging her toward the silverware. “Let me know if it’s as good as it looks.”

“It will be,” Cordelia said confidently. “For someone with no taste buds, Angel’s an _amazing_ cook!”

Buffy frowned a bit at that, once again finding herself annoyed that Cordelia of all people was privy to that little factoid that had once been just between her and Angel. But again, she told herself, this was good for him. And so ignoring Cordelia’s comment, she tried her best to stabilize her hold on her fork, a task made more than complicated with her fingers bandaged to the tips. She ended up having to kind of squeeze it between her thumb and hand, which raised the new dilemma of how she was supposed to use her knife. Cordelia, ever the problem solver, stepped in to save the day.

“Here Tarzan, let me get that,” she said, scooting over to take the seat next to Buffy where the shopping bag had been and sliding Buffy’s place setting complete with plate, fork and knife over to herself. 

“Thanks, Cordy,” said Buffy, her voice as small as she felt.

Cordelia smiled meaningfully at her. “Don’t mention it,” she said. Then to Angel said, “I want mine to look like Goofy.”

Angel scratched the back of his head. “That one’s Mickey’s dog, right?”

Buffy and Cordelia shared a look, before bursting out into laughter. Honestly, you could take the man out of the 1700s…

Wesley gave a short chuckle. Then said, “You’ll want to brush up on matters such as these before your baby arrives Angel, or else you’ll—“

Time froze, and with it, everyone in the room. Wesley clapped a hand over his mouth, stricken. Angel and Cordelia’s combined glares could have struck him dead. Buffy looked at each of them, individually, but their gazes were all locked on each other. None of them saw her until she spoke.

“Wh-what did Wes mean when he said—Why would Angel need to know about Mickey Mouse cartoons. What—“

She broke off as once again, Angel pulled back her chair and knelt down in front of her. Dimly, she was aware of Cordelia’s chair screeching back and her dragging an unresisting Wesley out of the room and up the stairs. Delicately, Angel took Buffy’s splinted hands in his.

“Buffy, I-I didn’t want you to find out this way, I swear. I didn’t know how I was gonna tell you, but not like this. Please, I—This is going to be hard to hear, but please just wait to hear all of it before you…decide on anything. Please, will you do that?”

Buffy nodded.

And she waited.

And she listened.

And while she was doing all that, she remembered the old rusty door from earlier, unlatched and creaking open, open, open, open, still. Bit by bit. Just a bit, but enough to slip back through. It wasn’t a Hellmouth, but it would do. The noise wasn’t so bad in here. She had to listen because Angel had asked her to, begged her, really. And who was she to make him beg? But at least from in here the words weren’t so loud. They came in small and hummy, like snow on the TV when the cable’s out. It made it easier to pretend. Pretend what? That it wasn’t true? Angel wouldn’t lie to her, especially about something like this. About her memory of the day after Thanksgiving not being what she thought it was. About the day they’d spent together. Being together. Making love. Making a baby. _Their_ baby. That Angel had tried to take away. No, no, that wasn’t right. It wasn’t. Angel wasn’t like Them, he wouldn’t—But he had, right? Kind of. Did giving her away count as taking her away? He let those Oracles cut up her memories like she had let Them cut up her body. Were the two the same? If there was a difference, why couldn’t she find it?

No. He’d done it because he loved her. That’s what he said, right? And Angel wouldn’t lie to her, especially about something like that…

“Buffy? Buffy, are you listening? Please, you have to believe I tried, okay, I went to the Oracles and begged them to give you back your memories of the day, but they refused to—Oh, God, Buffy. I never would have put you in this mess if I could have known—“

His voice cracked, he was trembling. Or was that her? Who was she to make him cry? Who were these Oracles to make him beg? Who were They to try and take away her miracle baby? Angel’s miracle baby. That’d he’d tried to give up. Twice. Like he’d given her up. Twice.

She went farther behind the door. This was too much.

From where she was, she could still hear that Angel had stopped speaking. He was waiting for something now. Her. To say something. To decide something. That’s what’d he’d said, right? Listen before you decide. What was there to decide? What was there to say? Could he hear her through the door? Everything was so muddled…

“I need to lie down,” she said. She thought she said. She hadn’t meant to say. She was still too itchy to lay still. But Angel had her in his arms before she could correct herself, and then there they were in his room. And then here she was, beneath the mountain of blankets, alone.

Trapped.

She can’t move she can’t move she can’t move she can’t move,

Until she did. Rolling like a bean, right onto the floor.

What now?

From before: _They’re really worried about you, Buffy, you should give them a call now that you’re up and about._

She was up. She was about. Had this been the decision she’d meant to make?

There was a phone by the bed, on the nightstand right above where she’d landed. She picked it up and dialed before she knew what she was doing. Then the voice on the other end picked up and startled her and made her forget her voice. 

“Hello? Angel, is that you?”

She remembered it again. “Hi Giles.”

“ _Buffy?!_ ”

He’d never sounded so glad to hear from her. It made her forget her voice again.

“Buffy? Buffy are you there? Are you alright? Is Angel still there with you?”

She remembered. “Angel and I are gonna have a baby, Giles.”

Silence.

Then, “B-Buffy, has Angel o-or Cordelia for that matter, given you any prescription painkillers?”

“He made me pancakes,” she said with a little giggle. She hadn’t gotten to eat them, though. Had Cordelia still gotten her Goofy pancake? She probably hadn’t and that made Buffy sad. Cordy had been being nice for once. “And Cordy bought me baby clothes. They’re really cute, even though I didn’t want anyone to know. But since Cordy and Wesley know, I think you should too. Everyone should. Except Mom, ‘cause she worries enough. But it’s your job to worry because you’re my Watcher, aren’t you Giles? Even though you don’t really like having me around as much anymore?”

“B-Buffy, I—of course I’m still—Is Angel there? Did he have you phone me? Did you mention Wesley? As in Wesley Wyndam-Pryce?”

“Wesley told me the truth and now I think Angel and Cordy are gonna kill him. Angel didn’t want me to know. He kept saying I wasn’t supposed to remember anything, Giles.”

More silence. Buffy got worried.

“I don’t know what I’m gonna do,” she whimpered, her throat beginning to clog with unshed tears. Her voice broke. “Giles, I’m scared. I don’t know what I’m gonna do, but I’m scared, and Angel said he didn’t mean to, but I don’t—I don’t—I don’t know anything. But I’m scared, Giles. I’m scared. I’m scared…”

She said it again and again and again, before realizing she was talking to a dial tone, and that was when the real tears came. She hit the door and watched as it crumbled to smoke and dust, then sobbing, she crumpled over what remained, and that was how Angel found her some time later.

Without saying a word, he gathered her up in his arms like a precious thing and walked them both back over to his bed. He climbed in with her still held in his arms and sat up against the headboard with her nested in them like a baby. (Would he hold their baby like this? Would he want anything to do with it at all, now that he couldn’t give it away?). Buffy nestled down into his chest, choking out the last of her sobs in a few ragged puffs of air, leaving her breathless and gasping. Angel held her through it all, pressing soft, silent kisses to the top of her head, his arms never once letting up their strong, sure hold.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At one point, I was gonna post this all as one super long fic. But then it just got too out of hand. I think multi-chapter works better tbh. 
> 
> Anyway, if you've stuck with this story so far, I appreciate you more than you know! And fear not, this is not the end. I have three more chapters written that just need to be edited! 
> 
> See you soon :)


	10. The Confrontation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for all of your comments!! I can't tell you how much they all mean to me. As someone who never got the chance to be apart of this fandom until it was almost too late, I love reading you guys' thoughts on my take(s) on these characters!! <3

The world was ending and Buffy’s head was being crushed.

Okay, maybe dial it back a little. The world probably wasn’t ending; whatever was giving her that notion was probably just a side effect of her head being crushed.

Or maybe an earthquake? That would make sense too, given how badly the walls and ceiling were shaking. _Felt_ like they were shaking. Weren’t shaking? No, just the ceiling. The ceiling of Angel’s room. In Angel’s apartment. Where Buffy was; and above which was Angel’s office filled with heavy furniture. So maybe that was it? No earthquake, no apocalypse, and no head being crushed. Just moving furniture and a regular old headache.

**_BOOM!_ **

The ceiling did shake that time, along with Angel’s bed and dresser, sending the framed picture Buffy had knocked down however long ago crashing back down to the floor again. But it wasn’t the loud noise or the non-earthquake bedroom shaking that startled Buffy out of bed and onto the floor, it was the muffled shriek of “ _GILES, NO!!_ ” sounding from the floor above.

Buffy’s feet didn’t have time to catch her, she was up so fast. Now trembling on all fours, she was glad there was no one around to see her crawl like a toddler over to the steps leading up to Angel’s office.

More rumblings from overhead shook the basement floor, making the steps quake as Buffy crawled up them. Above her, the ceiling rattled with the screech of furniture being shunted across the floor. She could hear more muffled yelling and swearing as multiple sets of feet stomped and slid across the floor above; the sounds of a multi-person struggle. Buffy did her best to pick up the pace, falling flat on her face at several points before she made it even halfway up the stairs for all her efforts.

One step. Then another. Hand then knee, hand then knee. She remembered how she and her cousins used to race each other up and down the stairs at their grandma’s house like this when they were really little. Unsurprisingly, the cute memory didn’t make this whole endeavor any less embarrassing, even with no one else around to witness it. Close enough to the top now, Buffy stood halfway up, scrubbing at the wall to find purchase as she was unable to grip the railing with her hands wrapped, but her legs were still too unsteady and weak for her to put her full weight on them. And so when, gripping the side of the wall, she tried to half-stand and bring her right leg up to the second step to the top, the left gave out and she went sliding backward halfway about down the steps, her chipped nails scraping uselessly against the dusty steps as she tried in vain to right herself before she sank all the way to the bottom.

There was a knowing pause as the calamity upstairs came to a grinding halt, and Buffy knew they were coming for her before she even heard the door swing open.

“ _Buffy_!”

Angel and Giles both bolted for her from the head of the stairs and ended up stuck in the narrow doorway as they each tried to squeeze past the other to be the first to get to her. Now, too mortified and winded to move, Buffy simply blinked up at them from the landing of the steps.

Giles had never looked more un-Watcherly in his entire life, not even during that incident with the band candy back in senior year. It wasn’t just the rumpled, ketchup-stained cardigan and jeans he was wearing or the small gashes along his forehead and chin—God knows he’s had more than his share of those. It was the dark red splotchiness tinting his face and neck almost purple, the tight, ferocious set to his jaw and the matching manic gleam in his eyes. Giles had been screaming. Giles never screamed, and definitely not enough to go full Yosemite Sam.

Buffy’s Watcher in question sent Angel stumbling back through the doorway with an elbow to the gut and sprinted the rest of the way down to reach her. The redness and the mania were still on him when he did, but he was gentle when he lifted Buffy to her feet, his one arm coming around her waist to support her as he wrapped his other hand around her arm and began to lead her hastily up the stairs.

“Don’t worry about your things, Buffy. I’ll send Xander and Riley back for them at a later date.”

What?

He was moving too fast for her to drag her feet (not that they would have cooperated), and faster than Buffy could blink, they were up the stairs and moving through the middle of Angel’s overturned office; breezing past a mutinous-looking Cordelia, who was clutching what was probably once a ceramic vase, and Wesley, who tried to throw himself in their pathway, only to be swatted aside by Giles like a flea. They were coming up on the door now and Buffy still had absolutely no idea what the Hell was happening; why Giles—whose idea it had been for her to go with Angel in the first place—was now adamant that she leave with him; why he had come here, fought through Angel and Cordy and Wes, torn apart Angel’s office in the process; or why he seemed so furious in the first place.

Seeing no other way to get the answers she needed, Buffy let her legs do what they did best and threw herself down on her knees.

Giles stopped short. Half-irritated and fully concerned, he stooped down, making to pick her up and lead her out the rest of the way, but Buffy caught him just as he leaned down.

“Giles,” she said in what she hoped was a sturdy enough voice. “ _What_ is going on?”

“That’s what _I’d_ like to know!” Cordelia said, marching over to them and coming to a stop directly in front of Buffy and turning her murderous glare right onto her. “What the _Hell_ did you do?!”

Now Buffy was _really_ confused.

“I woke up with a screaming headache and nearly broke my neck trying to come upstairs to see what you all were doing to cause it,” she said flatly.

“Oh, you are one to talk about screaming headaches,” Cordelia shot back. “I knew having you come stay here was going to end in death and mayhem but I thought that was only going to lead to you almost getting us killed— _again_ —not with Angel nearly getting staked by Psycho Watcher over there!”

She thrust a furious hand out at Giles, whose face seemed to be getting redder, if that were possible, as he opened his mouth to retort.

Buffy cut him off. “What are you talking about?!” She looked up at Giles. “What is she talking about?!”

‘Psycho Watcher’ was right, sure, but what on Earth…?

“That seems to be the question of the hour,” Wesley said primly, coming to meet them in the entryway. “Mr. Giles, please, as I said when you first arrived, let’s all just sit down a moment and—“

“She can go!” Cordelia cut him off, angrily. Then to Buffy, said. “I don’t know what kind of bullcrap you fed Giles to make him fly down here in that little toy car of his to destroy Angel and our place of work, but you’ve got some nerve—!“

“Stop it, Cordelia,” Angel shut her up mid-tirade, walking steadily past her and Wesley and bending down to sweep Buffy up off the floor, almost daring Giles to stop him. “Wesley’s right. Buffy’s not going anywhere until you tell us what the Hell’s going on, Giles.”

All eyes were on Giles now, every pair waiting for an explanation. To his credit, Giles didn’t back down, meeting all four glares with a piercing one of his own. To Buffy, he said.

“Buffy, what is the last thing you remember before Angel put you to bed?”

Buffy wrinkled her nose. ‘Put her to bed’ made her sound like an invalid. But she thought back.

“Angel was making everyone pancakes,” she said, sending a little smile up Angel’s way. “You remembered my story about Mom making me Mickey Mouse pancakes when I was sick.”

“Your mother reminded him,” Giles said blandly.

“I remembered,” Angel corrected him in a tight voice. “What happened after that, Buffy, can you tell us?”

She thought some more, the memory beginning to sour. “C-Cordelia went to the store, bought me some things—did you really ask her to do that?”

“ _Focus_ ,” said both Angel and Giles with matching clenched expressions. Buffy huddled in on herself, not wanting to reveal the full truth of that part of the memory in front of Giles.

“…Baby clothes,” she said in a small voice, hiding her head in Angel’s shoulder, ashamed, bracing herself for Giles to connect the dots.

“It’s alright, Buffy. It’s alright,” Angel said soothingly, the thumb of the hand wrapped around her shoulder beginning to swirl around her arm in small circles. “Tell us what else.”

“Cordelia cut up my pancakes for me…” Buffy recalled hazily. Then trailed off as the memory trail abruptly went cold.

“And…” Giles prompted in a grave voice, his tone rising not in anger, but apprehension.

“Is there more, Buffy?” Wesley chimed in. “Don’t be nervous, it’s only us, you can say whatever it is.”

But that was just it, there wasn’t anything else. Was there? Cordelia had cut up her pancakes for her, and then…and then…

“I…I don’t remember,” Buffy mumbled, her body starting to tremble. What had happened after that? Why hadn’t she gotten to eat her food? How did she end up in bed again? What had she done to almost get Angel killed? What happened? What happened? _What happened?_

“What did I do? What did I do?” she groaned aloud to herself.

“Shhh,” she heard Angel whisper in her ear. Then, to everyone, “Here, let’s…”

They were moving again, past the overturned tables and file cabinets and shattered glass, and into Angel’s office where he righted one of the flipped chairs and set Buffy down in it before turning to Giles, the two of them exchanging concerned glances with each other and at her. If Buffy weren’t so freaked right now, she’d be more than a little annoyed at how they kept doing that. Whatever. At least whatever tiff they’d gotten into before she’d woken up seemed to be over now.

“Buffy,” Giles began, coming over to stand on the other side of Angel’s desk so that he could direct his questions at both of them, implicitly. “Do you have any memory of calling me earlier this morning?”

Mortified, Buffy hung her head. “No.”

She heard the chair next to hers scrape back, and a hand touched her knee. “You don’t remember telling me that Angel had gotten you pregnant without your knowledge?”

Buffy’s head snapped up. Around her, several audible gasps buzzed throughout the room, including Cordelia’s “You little bi—,” before someone—probably Wesley—clapped a hand over her mouth. Buffy’s head swung from Angel to Giles, to Wesley, to Cordelia, and back, and then again, looking for some version of the truth from any of them, only to find them all asking the same thing of her.

“I-I don’t—“ she broke off and swallowed thickly. Her voice was barely a whisper when she spoke next.

“A-Angel, is that true?’

Another round of shocked gasps. She could feel the anxious looks shared by Giles and Angel above her head, could see Cordelia glaring at her in disbelief from out of her peripheral, could see Wesley take a step away from Cordelia’s side to come toward the three of them, only to be stopped by Giles’ hand.

“Leave,” he said, making a jerking motion with his hand toward the door, not even deigning to look in Wesley’s direction.

Wesley sputtered. “I will not, I’m just as much her Watcher as you!”

That apparently cost him the rest of whatever amount of civility Giles had managed to recover. Her Watcher scowled, cold steel.

“Pryce, if you know what’s good for you, you’ll walk yourself and Cordelia through that doorway before I take the stake I was going to use on Angel and shove it somewhere much less desirable.”

Wesley blanched and let off a strangled yip of protest from the back of his throat, but allowed himself to be led through the door by a still-glaring Cordelia. Giles waited for the door to close behind them before rounding on Angel.

“Explain.”

Angel did. Everything. About Buffy coming to LA to speak to him about his visit to Sunnydale over Thanksgiving. About the two of them being attacked by the Mohra demon and then tracking it through the sewers. About the demon’s blood making Angel human, and the two of them deciding to get back together soon after. Thankfully only lingering on the subject long enough for Giles to get the picture, before quickly skipping ahead to the part where the demon came back, and how Angel had gone to face it alone, and would have been killed had Buffy not caught up with him. How he went to go see the Oracles, the messengers of the Powers That Be, and how they’d explained to him that if he remained human, he’d be unable to help her in the coming battle during the End of Days. How in the end, he’d asked them to turn back the day, to make him a vampire again so that she could live. How he was meant to be the only one to remember that day, and how to everyone else, it never happened.

How he, Angel, was the father of Buffy’s child, and that was why she couldn’t remember conceiving it.

How he’d only learned the truth when Buffy had told him she was three months along.

How he’d gone to see the Oracles again to ask them to restore her memories, and they’d refused.

How he’d had no idea how he was going to explain any of this to her, but it definitely wasn’t supposed to have been as a result of Wesley accidentally spilling the beans over breakfast.

So that was why she hadn’t gotten to eat her pancakes.

“I guess I didn’t take the news very well the first time around,” Buffy tried to say lightheartedly.

Angel nodded. “You asked to lie down, so I took you back to bed.”

She turned to Giles. “And then I called you.”

Giles came around and set his hand on top of her shoulder, looking for the first time calm, but also worn; his face all drawn up and Concerned now that the splotchiness had cleared away.

“You were hysterical,” he said somewhat faintly, as though still reliving it.

“I’m so sorry,” said Buffy, looking back and forth between the two of them. “I’m sorry I freaked you out, Giles, and made you drive all the way here. A-and I’m sorry that he trashed your office and tried to stake you, Angel. I-I-I don’t know what made me—“

“Don’t,” Angel said, taking both her hands in his and bringing them up to his lips. “I’m the one who’s sorry. About everything. I’m sorry Wes sprung everything on you like that. I’m sorry that I couldn’t get your memories of that day back for you. I”m sorry that you’ve been dealing with all of this on your own this whole time. God, Buffy, I’m so sorry for everything that’s happened.”

“It’s alright,” she said, pulling one of her hands free and setting it on his cheek. “You did what you thought was best. You couldn’t have known, it’s not—”

Angel jerked his head and shook her away. As usual, deathly allergic to the phrase _It’s Not Your Fault_. Buffy frowned, the more things change…

“Do you still want me to go?”

Angel balked. “That was Cordelia,” he grunted. “Buffy, you can stay here with me as long as you need to, you know that.”

Before Buffy could reply, Giles cleared his throat, loudly.

“Would you excuse us, Angel,” he said in a tone that anyone who didn’t know him better would think was cordial. Angel, thankfully, knew Giles well enough to know that that hadn’t been a request. He nodded and, taking Buffy’s head in both his hands, brought it down to press an almost-kiss to her forehead, then stood and headed for the doorway.

“I’ll just go help Cordy and Wes clean up,” he said pointedly over his shoulder before the door shut behind him.

There was a short stretch of silence in which Giles appeared to be waiting to make sure no one was listening in on the other side of the door. But then it ended with the sounds of resumed sweeping and furniture rearranging, and Giles still hadn’t said a word. Without looking at Buffy at all, Giles he walked over to the other side of the room, to stare out of the window behind Angel’s desk. He removed his glasses and began cleaning them with the hem of his dirty shirt while the silence loomed and Buffy squirmed.

Thirty seconds. A minute. Buffy squirmed. Brooms swept. Papers shuffled. Chairs and tables were righted. File cabinets slammed open and shut. Cordelia whined. Angel and Wesley hushed. And Giles ignored. Buffy sighed.

“I know Angel said I could stay here as long as I wanted, but if you think it’s better that I go back to Sunnydale with you, I could—“

“ _You’ll do no such thing_ ,” Giles cut her off shortly. He finished polishing his glasses and put them back on his face but remained facing the window.

“O-kay…” Buffy stalled, not sure where to take the conversation from there. She thought she knew by now what to say when she screwed up like this and Giles got all stern and disappointed Watcher on her. Admit wrongness, submit a peace offering for consideration, get told off for being an idiot, and move on. Only Giles wasn’t playing along this time and Buffy didn’t get why when obviously he was so dead set against her being here. He turned to look at her then, suddenly, with a quick spin on his heel, and Buffy’s head ducked as though it’d been slapped down. Her shoulders hunched. Her face felt all flushed and prickly and she folded her arms across her chest as though to protect herself. Or Seamonkey. Or both of them. It wasn’t that she was _afraid_ of Giles when he got like this, it was just that it was hard. He wasn’t Giles, he was Principal Flutie, and Snyder, the police picking her up from the burning remnants of her school. He was Mom. He was Dad. He was “ _Joyce if you can’t control her then…!_ ,” and _“Just try not to get kicked out, okay honey?_ ”

Buffy wasn’t scared, but He wasn’t Giles and she _can’t stand_ not-Giles.

He spoke again, this time turning about half-way around to face her.

“Buffy, correct me if I’m wrong but you’ve never had a full-on dissociative episode before today, have you?”

Buffy’s head jerked up. “A…diss-social what?”

Giles shook his head and turned all the way around. “What you and Angel just described,” he said. “You can recall all of your actions throughout today up to a certain point, but everything after that is either cloudy or blank, correct?”

Buffy nodded still not sure where he was going with this. “Yeah…I mean, no. Yeah, as in that’s what happened. No as in you’re right, that’s never happened to me.”

Giles took his glasses back off. “I see.”

He put them back on. “Then, in that case, I think it’s best you if you spent the rest of your recovery here with Angel, as planned.”

Buffy shifted in her seat. This was weird. Giles actually advocating that she spend time alone with Angel, in his apartment, in his bed. She didn’t know what to say to that. Luckily, Giles wasn’t done.

“Although we have Riley doing his best to investigate the er…procedures th-that were…performed on you,” Giles took his glasses off. “So far he hasn’t been able to come up with anything. With that in mind, we don’t know what the side effects of whatever those…people did to you will be, or how long it will take you to recover your powers, or whether that process will be at all linear—“

“But they’ll come back, right?” Buffy said suddenly, leaning forward in Giles’ direction, desperate now. Of all the thoughts that have gone through her mind since this whole thing started, her losing her powers for good has never been one of them. Of course she’d get them back. She’d get better and it would all come back. Of course it would. Of course it would. 

“It should,” Giles said. “I don’t believe there is any human science on Earth that could permanently strip the Slayer of her powers. That being said, we don’t know when exactly they'll return, and your being…your carrying a child will more than likely complicate things.”

Buffy frowned. “What do you mean?”

Giles cleared his throat and removed his glasses again. “A fetus survives off its mother. To keep it alive—“

“Don’t call him an ‘it,’” Buffy snapped, surprising both Giles and herself. Not that she actually knew whether or not Seamonkey was a ‘he,’ but he wasn’t an ‘it’ either. He’d never be anyone's ‘it.’ Never.

“Sorry,” Giles said. He put his glasses back on. “To keep the baby alive in times of high stress, the mother’s body will take nutrients from her to give to the fetus. In your case, your body’s natural healing mechanism may be delayed however much by its need to see to your child’s needs first.”

“So in other words, I can hardly walk right now because my baby’s sapping all my energy?”

Giles rolled his eyes and put his glasses back on. “In laymen’s terms.”

Buffy dropped her head back and laid a hand on her belly with a soft slap. _Thanks a lot, Seamonkey. I thought we were in this together._

“Okay,” she said, picking her head back up. “But…what about Sunnydale?”

“There’s no pressing threat of a Harvest or an Ascension at present,” Giles said mildly. “The people of Sunnydale made due in your absence for sixteen years. They’ll be fine for a few months. Generally speaking.”

“ _A few months?!_ ”

“Or however long you decide you need.”

“ _However long I—_!“ Buffy breathed, totally thrown. “Giles I can’t just—“

“What you _can’t_ do,” he said firmly. “Is put yourself and your child at risk. Like it or not, Buffy, you’re in a vulnerable position right now, in more ways than one. You need time and space to recover. And if you won’t do it for yourself, then do it for your child. The Initiative got its hands on the two of you once, if you go back to Sunnydale now in your condition they may very well try again. We don’t even want to think about what that madwoman will do if she has another chance to experiment on a gestating supernatural being!”

For a moment, Buffy’s heart stopped and she became very cold. The breeze coming in through the open windows of Angel’s office permeated the fabric of her pajama shirt and pants, chilling her sweat-damp skin, making her shiver. Making her remember; a cold table. A scalpel peeling off strips of skin, the itchy trickle of the blood as it seeped out of an open wound. A needle. A man’s voice whistling along to Elvis Costello. Hands cupping. Fingers prodding. A needle. A needle. A needle.

Buffy couldn’t move. She felt herself shaking. Trembling. Sweating. Retching. But she couldn’t move. Couldn’t stop. Couldn’t stand. Couldn’t get herself back up on that seat when she slipped. Couldn’t get away from those hands. Couldn’t get them off her. Couldn’t get them off. Couldn’t get them off. Couldn’t…Couldn’t…Couldn’t…

“Buffy…”

_No, get away!_

“Buffy…”

_No, no! **Get away!**_

“Buffy…”

She jerks her head out of Their grip and tries to get away, but They’re stronger. They hold her down and press something to her head and her vision goes white and her body goes limp.

“Buffy…”

Buffy blinked, and there was Giles at her side, crouching by her chair, pressing something to her forehead. Something soft. A handkerchief, she realized, as he continued to pat it across her brow.

“Oh…”

Giles gave a relieved sigh, his face once again drawn and worn.

“I apologize,” he said quietly. “What I said was tactless. I was…speaking out of concern, but I should have chosen my words more carefully.”

Buffy could only nod.

“But you see what I mean,” he went on. “You’re in no shape to return to Sunnydale.”

Again, Buffy nodded, bringing up a hand to roughly wipe away the water gathering in the corner of her eye.

“I’m sorry, Giles,” she murmured wetly.

Giles gave her a sympathetic pat on the arm. “Don’t be. I knew you wouldn’t be very receptive to the idea of being out of commission.”

Buffy shook her head. “Not for that, for…”

Where to even start? For having to be out of commission for so long and putting countless lives at risk? For getting captured by Them in the first place? For trusting shady government scientists over her Watcher? For exposing herself as the Slayer? For not getting herself out of there? For hooking up with her vampire ex? For getting knocked up by said vampire? For being reckless? For being an idiot? For trying to enlist in the military just to get closer to a guy? For being weak? For not training with him anymore so that he could have helped her avoid all this? Ugh, for everything that’s happened since stupid college even began, she could begin with that.

“I’m a crummy Slayer,” was what she went with instead. The admission coming out mumbled and creaky through the unshed tears in her throat. 

Giles bristled. “I’ll have none of that."

Buffy scoffed and let her head loll forward. “I bet none of the ones before me ever got captured by crazy government scientists.”

“Likely not,” Giles said lightly. “There was, however, a seventeen-year-old Slayer who was burnt at the stake by Pope Innocent VII for being a witch.”

Buffy snorted. “Well, I bet there’ve never been any who got pregnant by a vampire.”

“Angel wasn’t a vampire when the two of you conceived a child.”

Buffy huffed. “You’re being overly technical.”

“I’m a retired librarian,” Giles said. Then, turning very serious, added, “Buffy, the Slayer’s calling is not one that promises the Called a peaceful end. We both know this, though we try our best not to dwell on it. Every fight could be your last—“

“—I didn’t fight!” Buffy cried out, ashamed. “All I did was lay there and let them—“

“You were a non-combatant,” Giles clarified. “Which makes what they did all the more despicable. Being victimized doesn’t make you a weakling, Buffy, but that you’ve managed to survive yet another attack on your person has made you that much stronger. Throughout the time I’ve known you, you’ve faced opponent after opponent, been attacked, beaten, killed, preyed upon, stalked—and yet time and time again you’ve come out the victor. I know this time was different. I know that I can’t possibly have any idea of what you’re going through, or will go through as you heal, but what I do know is that you are everything I could have hoped for. As a Slayer, as a student, as a—as a person, I couldn’t be more proud of you, Buffy. And I couldn’t be more grateful that you were brought home to us safe and sound.”

Giles doesn’t really do hugs. Not really. Not unless Buffy’s really, really hurt, or really, really sad, or it’s after one of them’s really, really screwed up and it’s time to make amends. So it must be the combined power of all three that gets him to pull her down into his arms and crush her to him, so close and so tight she’d be in his lap if not for the fact that they were both kneeling. His fingers brushed through her hair, and Buffy knew for sure she felt him tremble when she heard him say

“I’ve failed you, Buffy.”

They both went rigid.

Buffy pulled back to see Giles staring straight ahead at her with a look on his face that was equal parts embarrassed and heartsick like he was kicking himself for saying that out loud. His hand cupped her cheek, and Buffy had the feeling she must be wearing a similar expression on her face. They both looked away.

“What do you mean,” Buffy said softly.

Giles shook his head and brought her in for another hug. “I’m—I _was_ your Watcher," he said quietly. "You’re nineteen now and living on your own at school, but though you're no longer a child, you're hardly a woman grown, Buffy. You can take care of yourself, of course, but you still need—that is, you still _deserve_... But this year, I used the fact that I’d been fired by the Council to let myself off the hook—“

“Giles, this isn’t your fault.”

“And yet, I should have been there more for you after your graduation. You deserved more from me, Buffy. Do you know when I met that Walsh woman, she told me that to her it seemed you lacked a strong male presence in your life—“

“Well screw her!” Buffy blurted out. “You’re not going to listen to the woman who tried to—who—“

“Certainly not,’ said Giles. His hold on her grew tighter. “But even so…Buffy, when the Council fired me and assigned you to Wesley, I told you I wasn’t going anywhere…”

“And you didn’t.”

“But I did.”

“But not for long,” Buffy said softly into the fabric of Giles’ shirt. Her stomach was doing that thing where it got all weird and drippy, and she buried her head deeper into Giles’ chest so she said what she had to say next.

“I never stopped thinking of you as my Watcher, Giles.”

Giles squeezed her tighter, and the two them remained there on the floor just like that, holding each other. Buffy letting Giles pet her hair and rub her back while they listened to the sounds of cleaning and bickering coming from the other room. Until finally, Giles broke the silence.

“On the matter of your pregnancy,” he began somewhat awkwardly. “Have you, er…been seen by anyone? Rather, an ordinary, non-military medical practitioner?”

Buffy shook her head. “No, I found out I was pregnant when I took the take-home test. I was so focused on hiding it that I…I guess I didn’t think to go to a real doctor…you know how much I hate them.”

“Quite,” Giles said. “Your mother doesn’t know, then?”

Buffy shook her head again. “You’re not gonna tell her, are you? Did you tell her you were coming here? Do Xander and Willow know you’re here?”

“No, no, and no,” Giles said, only slightly exasperated. “Am I given to understand, then, that you have no plans to tell your mother or your friends about the baby anytime soon?”

“Or…ever?” Buffy said hopefully, dodging the glare on Giles’ face.

“Buffy,” he sighed heavily, then stood and brought her up with him and sat her back down in the chair she’d been sitting in before. He crossed his arms and continued to glare at her while half-leaning against Angel’s desk.

“I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that this can’t go on,” he said sternly.

Buffy crossed her arms and curled in on herself. “It can for a little while, though, right?”

Giles pinched the bridge of his nose and reached for his glasses again before apparently thinking better of it and putting his hand back down.

“Everyone is very worried about you, especially your mother and Willow,” he said in a restrained tone. “I don’t have to remind you of what has happened in the past when you’ve withheld important news from your loved ones.”

“Just for a little while, Giles?” Buffy pouted, begging just a little. “I’m still trying to figure all of this out myself. I know what Mom and Willow and Xander will say when I tell them the truth, I just wanna give myself time to get ready for it.”

Giles looked dubious but nevertheless said, “This is your news, Buffy, you’ll reveal it when you’re ready and no one but you will know when that is. In the meantime, however, I must insist that you be seen by a doctor, especially after the—after your ordeal. Again, if not for yourself then for your child. Just to make sure he’s healthy.”

Honestly, if it was between telling her mother and friends that she was having a baby out of wedlock by her vampire ex-lover and being inside anyone’s exam room, ever again, the choice was obvious. Buffy opened her mouth to say just that when Giles cut her off.

“I could go with you if you like.”

Buffy’s mouth clipped shut. She pressed her lips together and looked warily up at him.

“Really?”

His eyes met hers,' more earnest and yielding than Buffy has ever seen them in her life. She'd forgotten how much she trusted them until now. 

“Of course.”

She bit her lip. “You’d stay with me the whole time?”

Giles nodded once, hard. Firm. “I’ll not leave your side for a second.”

“Promise?”

That had come out smaller than Buffy had wanted it to, but it was worth it for how Giles bent down and once again drew her into his arms.

“Oh, my darling girl,” he said, with a soft kiss on top of her head.

Buffy shut her eyes, drew a wet, shuddery breath and whispered into Giles’ ratty cotton pullover.

“‘Kay.”

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next episode: Buffy and Giles' trip to the OB-GYN.


	11. The Visit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the long wait, but I hope this chapter makes up for it <33
> 
>  
> 
> I do want to give a special thank you to Last Watcher over on the Buffy-Boards. Thank you so, so, so much for all of your help with Outlining this fic and with beta-ing the first part of this chapter. I definitely never would have made it this far without you!! 
> 
> Thank you also to @themoosejthm for letting me bounce plot ideas and characterization off of you while Winglet Blackbird was busy. You were such a wonderful, kind, patient substitute beta and I genuinely don't know what I would have done with myself and all my neurosis without you. 
> 
> And finally, as always, thank you to my INCREDIBLE beta, Winglet Blackbird. I hit quite a few rough patches with this chapter as you're well aware, but truly, I could not have gotten through them without your fair and honest feedback. Thank you for always making time in your day to review my work. I never feel like I can post a chapter until you've read it.

 

It’s been six days since Buffy’s been outside—not just outside the apartment, mind you, outside period. Probably longer than that if you counted the time she’d spent unconscious, and the time before that (which Buffy was doing her best not to). But all that aside, she didn’t know what was worse, that it had really been that long or that it had taken her until today to realize it. Somewhere in there was a morbid joke about how cohabiting with a vampire has turned her into one, minus the fangs and the blood drinking, but Buffy was in no mood right now to make it. 

Her hair was a wreck. 

Actually, it _was_ a wreck; now it was an _unsalvageable_ wreck after she’d attacked it with her prematurely de-splinted hands. Buffy had known before the “no” had even left her mouth that shutting down Angel’s suggestion to have him or Cordy help her get ready for today was a stupid move on her part. But between Buffy’s own need to do things for herself after almost a week of playing the part of Angel Investigations’ pet convalescent and the cold war she and Cordelia have had going on since Giles had come to LA last week, the chance to do something for herself for the first time in too long had been too good to pass up. In hindsight though, Buffy didn’t know which was stupider, knowing something is a dumb idea and pushing ahead with it anyway, or that, plus actually having the nerve to be disappointed when your dumbness blows up in your face.

Her fingers may have healed enough for her to have successfully wheedled Wesley into cutting her out of her makeshift cast last night while Angel was out looking into a suspected poltergeist haunting, but they were still too swollen and tender to rake a comb through the bird’s nest sitting on top of her head. This, plus the eye-watering twinge in her hips and between her legs that brought her to her knees whenever she took so much as a step, and the dull, dizzying ache that stretched from her lower back all the way up to her neck, meant the theoretically simple task of dressing herself for the day had left Buffy slumped over the edge of the bathtub with her jeans half pulled up, her hair past the brink of disaster, and praying that Giles was stuck in a five-hour traffic jam so she’d have enough time to make herself look half-way presentable by the time he got here. 

 “Giles is here.”

_Shoot!_  

Buffy didn’t bother pulling her head up from her hands to see Angel hovering in the doorway. 

“Do you…want any help?” 

They both knew she did and that at this point she wasn’t so proud as to not admit it, but even so, Buffy didn’t answer him right away.  

Angel’s been…well, _an angel_ throughout this whole thing: bringing her breakfast, lunch, and even sometimes dinner in bed on her really bad days when she’s in too much pain to even sit up; watching hours upon hours of trashy TV with her at night when she doesn’t want to sleep; telling her how proud he was of her once she’d finally worked up the nerve to call Mom, then letting her cry all over him after the blow up Mom had had when Buffy had begged her not to come to LA because she just wasn’t ready and no, she couldn’t tell Mom why, not yet (not ever, if Buffy had her way); helping her bathe and get dressed every morning; soothing her through the nightmares and the flashbacks, always being there to remind her of where she was, and when, and with who—always being there, period. Buffy couldn’t imagine having to go through all of this without his help, his patience, his love, and she’d never want him to think she wasn’t grateful for all he’s done for her; but where did this leave them? When her Cripple Buffy phase was over and her powers come back ( _when_ they did, because they’d have to. _They’d_ _have_ _to!_ ), what would happen then, with her? with them? with their baby? _Their_ baby, whom they’ve conveniently avoided mention of throughout this little game of doctor they’ve been playing this entire past week and some change. What then?

Seamonkey is _their_ baby; not just Buffy’s Seamonkey anymore, but _theirs_ ’—hers’ and Angel’s, and while Buffy couldn’t be more relieved to not only have the mystery of Seamonkey’s origins solved, but to also know he’s _Angel’s_ , she’s still too much of a chicken to ask Angel himself how _he_ felt about any of it, and what he expected to happen once she was all whole and healed and Slayer-y again. Was she just supposed to go back to Sunnydale and make like she never learned the identity of her child’s father? Angel had made it clear that night in the sewers last year that he didn’t want them to be in each other’s lives anymore, and he’s made no indication his feelings on that have changed now that two are in fact, three. If that really was how things were going to be, then fine, Buffy could deal. She’s been dealing, been prepared to deal since the beginning, even before Psycho Shrink and her military minions made her into their lab rat. When everything eventually went back to normal and Buffy was on her own with this again, she’d deal like she always did. But if that was going to happen, she’d have to re-learn how to deal without Angel’s help. Which meant…

“Yeah.”  

…She’d have to start now. Not _now_ , now as in “right now,” though because Buffy’s already going to be a mess at the doctor’s office in her ripped Chore Saturday jeans and her old _Tiny Toon Adventures_ t-shirt she could have sworn she’d told Mom to put with the other Goodwill stuff forever ago; she doesn’t need to add mangy, meth head hair to top off this whole Homeless Chic look she’s got going on today. 

Buffy huffed and looked up to find Angel no longer standing in the doorway but headed her way with a chair from the kitchen table. He brought it into the bathroom and set it down in front of her, and motioned for her to come sit.  

These days the act of standing on her own was a lot like preparing sushi on a unicycle in that it took a great deal of time, skill, preparation, and balance, and in the end, still resulted in failure. On her first attempt this go-around, Buffy made it up to the half-crouched position she always did before a wave of nausea and dizziness swept up through the ache in her spine and Angel had to catch her before it sent her collapsing backward into the tub. With his help, she was able to half walk, mostly shuffle over to the chair and sit. She handed Angel her hairbrush without looking at him, and he went to work fixing her up. 

Buffy almost couldn’t bear it. Angel was just so tender with everything he did, especially when it came to her, and it wasn’t his fault at all, but a lot of the time now him being this way with her gave her the same feeling as looking at herself in the mirror did. That old sensation, of looking at her reflection and being satisfied with what she saw, the familiar tightness in her chest whenever Angel brushed his knuckles across her cheek or kissed her temple, or ever-so-lovingly detangled the knotted mess she’d made of her hair with his careful, measured strokes--it was all still there, bright and warm and _hers’_ but when she went to reach for it her whole body locked down and she was back on that metal slab: A pathetic, frozen fleshbag patiently awaiting dissection. This was not Angel’s fault. He was doing his best and that was more than enough, so much more than Buffy would ever think to ask. That the love Angel tended her with often left her feeling hopeless and alien and more like that picked over carcass he’d rescued from that lab was for her to deal with. And she would. 

Or maybe she wouldn’t. 

Whatever time she got with Angel always came with an expiration date. It probably wouldn’t be too much longer now before this...whatever they’d been doing ended with another heartbreaking sewer breakup or amnesia-inducing temporal fold that--if Buffy was lucky for once--would make her forget how easy and painful and just plain _right_ it felt to fall into her ex-lover’s arms and let him take care of her. 

Angel finished up just as that last depressing thought pulled into the station. Handing her back the hairbrush, he left the room again, only to return seconds later with her tennis shoes. Buffy hasn’t worn shoes in as long as she hasn’t breathed fresh air, and the less said about how she’d forgotten they were a thing right until Angel had come back with them, the better. 

She bent down carefully to pull up the laces of her left shoe and ended up slumped over her lap as a sharp spasm in her left hip sent up another wave of pain and nausea, causing her to once again go limp. Angel caught her by her forearms and guided her up, resting her against the back of the chair. Hands bracing the sides of her face, he held her steady and allowed her to center herself before he brought her head up to face his furrowed expression. 

“You don’t have to do this, Buffy.” 

He’d said that before, when she and Giles had told him after their talk that Giles would be back in a couple of days to take her to see an actual doctor for the baby’s sake. Giles had balked at Angel’s not-so-subtle insinuation that Buffy was only going because her Watcher was strong-arming her into it, and so to avoid another murder attempt on either of them by the other, Buffy had announced that she could feel another headache coming on and _Angel would you please help me back downstairs to bed?_  The whole fainting Victorian noblewoman ploy was a cheap trick, but it had kept Buffy from having to explain to Angel—in front of Giles, and Wesley, and Cordelia—the real truth she still wasn’t completely ready to divulge about why she’d agreed to do this.

“I need to know he’s okay, Angel.” 

There. That...actually hadn’t been so bad. 

...Or hadn’t it? 

Angel’s eyes went round, his lips quivered into a sulky smile.

“You…know it’s a boy?” 

Buffy gritted her teeth. “ _He’s not an ‘it’!_ ” 

Angel rocked back a bit, thrown off by her outburst. He stiffened and opened his mouth to apologize but Buffy cut him off.  

“Sorry,” she mumbled into her lap, grimacing down at her fingers, still blue-black and useless. 

“It’s just… _I know_ he’s in there, because…” Her voice cracked. It took several heavy gulps of breath before before she could continue. “When they would talk about me, over me, about whatever stuff they were doing, they’d mention him and that was how I knew that they hadn’t just cut him out of me and took him apart too. _But I can’t feel him_. Babies are supposed to kick, and I’ve never felt him and I don’t know if it’s only because he doesn’t have legs yet or if it’s…it’s ‘cause they _did something to him_ while they had us in—“  

“Shhh…” Angel had her in his arms before Buffy had even realized she’d started crying. God, she was _so sick_ of crying. She sniffled that into the crook of his neck and he hushed her with a quiet _I know_ kissed into the shell of her ear. _I_ _know_ , he whispered again and then again as his hands ran up and down her back, experts now at avoiding the bruising along her spine.  

“I’m sorry,” he said, pulling back to cup her cheek and say it to her face. “I understand. I should have left it alone the first time.” 

Buffy shook her head into his palm. She sniffled and said, “You only want what’s best.” Then, feeling a fleeting speck of courage coming on, added, “I wish you could come too.” 

She felt a shudder come from Angel’s chest, as though if he’d had a heartbeat it would have skipped just then. 

“So do I.” 

He said this in a purposefully low murmur he’d probably hoped she wouldn’t catch. Still, Buffy took that as a good sign as he brought her back in to rest against his chest. She took a long second to bury herself in him before pulling back all the way so that she could be looking at him and know she’d heard him right after she said what she was going to say next

“It’s a bummer you have to miss it.”

She watched closely, not even daring to breathe, as a wry smile crept its way across Angel’s face, unbidden, but allowed.  

He said, “It’s okay. I’ve already got some idea.”

Buffy let herself sink back into his arms with a slow sigh, completely at a loss for what to do with that.  

 

 

* * *

 

 

Though admittedly, Rupert’s frame of reference was rather limited--having never set foot in a place like this before today--that minor factoid did nothing to inform the absolute certainty he’d felt from the moment he and Buffy had entered the waiting area of Women for Women Obstetrics that he’d selected the right facility for her. With its earth-toned walls, overstuffed sofas, hoarded collection of bonsai plants and throw pillows, and ambient almost to the point of being gauche _Spirits of the Rainforest_ meditation CD playing on a constant loop, this place more resembled a health spa than it did a doctor’s office. Which, Rupert was only now coming to realize, had been exactly what he’d been after all along. 

Last week when he’d first sat down to begin researching obstetricians in the Los Angeles area, Rupert had begun with only a very nebulous idea of what to look for: A practitioner with a degree from a reputable medical institution was a given, obviously; but how was he to know whether the obstetrics program at Johns’ Hopkins was superior the one at Tulane? Then, of course there had been professional experience to consider: Dr. Timothy Everett’s website had a whole page containing over thirty patient testimonials from women of various racial and socioeconomic backgrounds who had come from all over the county to be seen by him. These women’s comments glowed with praise for Everett’s attentiveness, flexibility, dedication and compassion. That was all well and good, but there was no evidence to suggest these reviews hadn’t been faked. And besides, wouldn’t Buffy prefer a female, given what she’d been through? Dr. Lisa Purkowski had served in the Peace Corps prior to attending medical school, and after completing her residency, had spent two years working at a women’s health clinic in Paraguay, where she’d studied alternative birthing practices under the tutelage of local area midwives. Impressive, but then again, Walsh was a woman, so would it be better for Buffy to see a man, after all? ...Then again, given that both men and women had taken part in her ordeal, Buffy was likely to be skittish of anyone in a lab coat. So with that in mind, did the gender of the physician she saw really matter all that much in the end?

Rupert had somehow managed to spend an entire day dithering over this one issue alone, then spent another trying to come up with a cover story he could take to Joyce in order to ask for her advice on the matter without having to explain to her that the reason behind his questioning was that her teenager was now pregnant with her vampire ex-lover’s child.  

On the third day, he’d woken up with the previous day’s migraine and absolutely no progress on either front. And then, he’d found Dr. Ife Ndukwe, M.D.; Stanford graduate, Doctors Without Borders alumnus, nationally ranked, award-winning OB-GYN, and founder and co-proprietor of Women for Women Obstetrics along with friend and former Stanford roommate, Dr. Rebecca Fischer.  

Rupert would like to say that it was Dr. Ndukwe’s practice itself that made him settle on her--she was supremely qualified, of course, but so had been the others, the only thing that set Dr. Ndukwe apart was that none of her competition could boast a staff that was entirely female. But in actuality, it was her name that made Rupert certain she was the right choice. He couldn’t put his finger on why this was, but there was something familiar about this doctor that endeared him to her without him even needing to have met her; something that assured Rupert he could trust this doctor with the girl trembling like a wet kitten into his side, that she would be gentle with her. 

He hoped he was right, because for as much as this office’s atmosphere had put Rupert that much more at ease with his choices, the same could not be said for his charge. Buffy’s overall disposition had been on a rapid decline from when Rupert had picked her up from Angel’s and she had limped past him with a barely whispered “Hi, Giles;” to now, where she sat shrinking into his side, both arms wrapped around his upper bicep in a tense but feeble grip. This, Rupert had been anticipating; a week and a half was nowhere near enough time to recover from the type of ordeal to which Buffy had been subjected, and was cruel to put her in such a familiar position so soon after. Rupert would hate himself for it if he didn’t truly believe it was in Buffy’s best interest. And yet it was still jarring to see her so wilting and needy, and so unabashed at showing it. It was, for Rupert, an uncomfortable reminder of how adept she had become over the years at shouldering the burdens--both physical and mental--that came with her Calling, that even he could forget the toll it took on a spirit as young as hers,’ until it broke completely.  

_That_...was an unforgivable thing to think. Buffy was not broken; she was--like the fingers of the hands that imbecile Pryce had had no business un-splinting-- _fractured_. Fractured, and due to the precise nature of her wounds, taking longer to heal than normal. But they would get there. _She would get there_ , Rupert assured himself, bringing up his free hand to smooth across the top of the girl’s head. _She would._

“Buffy Summers?” 

The both of them started at the sound of Buffy’s name being called. Rupert stood slowly, taking extra care as he brought Buffy up with him and adjusting her hold ever so slightly so he could bring his forearm around her waist for added support. Rupert was sure they must have looked a pair, shuffle-dragging as they were over to where Indra, the young receptionist who had checked them in, stood waiting to lead them down a short and slightly darkened hallway. Buffy’s grip twitched.  

Indra beckoned them into the room behind the second door on the left and told them from the hall that the doctor would be in to see them shortly, then promptly shut the door behind her. The swiftness with which the receptionist took her leave gave the heavy door that much more momentum, causing it to slam its way shut, the sound swallowing Buffy’s barely audible squeak. 

Rupert was gratified to see that their exam room matched the outer office’s unconventional décor. There was, of course, an exam table, a sink, and other medical equipment about, but the room itself held none of the cold sterility often associated with more standard doctors’ offices. The walls were painted a warm apricot color and decked with muted, Neo-Impressionist paintings of beaches and shorelines and sunsets. What Rupert assumed to be Dr. Ndukwe’s workstation was an organized jumble of spiral notebooks and overstuffed, multi-colored binders with random bits of paper poking out from the edges of the top. Above the workstation hung a corkboard tacked with children’s scribbles and coloring pages, half-obscuring the doctor’s own awards and clippings of newspaper articles she must have been featured in. On the edge of the desk, poking out from behind a stack of binders, was a framed photograph of who Rupert assumed to be a young Dr. Ndukwe in her graduation cap and gown, flanked on either side by an older looking couple--her parents, Rupert had to imagine, edging in for a closer look just as the door swung open.  

The only difference between the girl in the photo on the desk and the beaming woman who had just come bursting through the door was her hair. She had apparently traded the micro-braids she’d had at the time of her graduation for a short, wavy bob that (in Rupert’s opinion) framed her face better, bringing more attention to her broad smile, dimpled cheeks, and youthful, laughing eyes. She’d seemed taller in her picture--but then, Rupert thought, looking down at Buffy--people with enormous personalities often do. In any case, Rupert hoped the doctor’s slim, unimposing stature would help set Buffy more at ease. 

“Hello, hello!” the woman sing-songed as she bounced further into the room, taking a moment to shut the door carefully behind her so as not to let it slam. 

“You must be Buffy, it’s so nice to meet you! I’m Dr. Ndukwe.” she said, sticking her hand out for Buffy to shake. Buffy shifted awkwardly in place, turning her head up for just a second to look plaintively at Rupert before ducking back down. Dr. Ndukwe’s grin faltered.  

“I can’t, um...” Buffy wriggled her arm uselessly at her side. “I hurt my hands...” 

Rupert noticed the doctor’s eyes narrow as they shifted down to where Buffy’s hands hung at her sides. Pointedly, they turned on him next, and there was a sharp edge to her breezy smile when she spoke. 

“I’ll say...” 

The words were addressing Buffy, but everything in the woman’s demeanor was directed solely at Rupert. Her smile didn’t waver, but those almond brown eyes had gone from playful to pincer-like, tearing off strips of him layer by layer; knowing without even needing to prompt a question that he, the man who had brought her this gravely injured, obviously traumatized, newly pregnant girl was already lying to her face. She blinked once, and it felt to Rupert like in the span of it that she’d managed to file away every relevant bit of information on him in the hard drive of her brain before she went back to Buffy, her sunny disposition slipped right back into place. 

“That must have been some bar fight you started. I hope these battle scars at least mean you got a few good licks in!” 

Buffy shrugged. “Wasn’t much of a fight,” she mumbled. “I got creamed.” 

Dr. Ndukwe sobered. “You’ll get them next time, slugger.” 

She reached out a hand as though to pat Buffy on the shoulder before apparently thinking better of it when Buffy shrunk back. She let her hand fall and her eyes, colder with justified suspicion, once again flicked over to Rupert before she turned turned them back on Buffy. 

“This is your father, right? I’m surprised you didn’t have him take you to the hospital before coming here.”

Buffy’s head shot up.  

“No hospitals!” she said, chin jutted out and sounding more like herself than she had all day. “M-my dad patched me up at home, but I took the splints off last night so that I could use my hands again.” 

For the first time since entering the room, Dr. Ndukwe’s grin faded completely. “Sweetheart, splints or no, your fingers are still broken. You can’t use them regardless.” 

Buffy faltered, once again darting a quick look to Rupert before shuttering her head back down. 

“For now,” she said quietly, sending Rupert another pleading look. “They’ll be better soon, though...right, Dad? ‘Cause I heal fast. Faster than most people, right?”

_Tell her!_ , the not-so-subtle undercurrent in Buffy’s answer screamed. _Tell her, tell_ me _. You’re Giles and you know everything. Tell me I’ll get my powers back!_

It wasn’t in Rupert’s nature to lie or give false hope, but needs must. 

“It’s uncanny,” he said to Dr. Ndukwe’s pinched face. “Just the damnedest thing, really. It’s been the case ever since she was a little girl. She fractured her collarbone once when she was six and was fine less than a week later.” 

Dr. Ndukwe raised an eyebrow at him and for the first time allowed a frown to slip across her face, if only for a second. She made sure it was gone when she addressed Buffy next. 

“I see. Well then, on to the actual reason we’re here.” She reached behind her and patted the exam table. “If you’re ready, Buffy, you can hop on up here and we’ll get this ball a-rollin.’”

There was a long pause, during which Rupert was sure everyone in the room could physically _feel_ the girl’s hesitation. Buffy seemed to grow even smaller beside him as she made no attempt to move toward the table. Her eyes drifted up to Rupert’s, rounder and more frightened than he had ever seen them in all the time he’d know her. After a beat, she nodded and with his arm still wrapped around her waist, Rupert guided her forward. 

It was a short distance from where they were standing, off to the side against the wall adjacent the door to the hall, to the exam table, which sat in the middle of the room. Dr. Ndukwe had already taken her seat on a rolling stool on the other side of the table near one of the larger monitors. Her stare was back to probing Rupert as she watched him lift Buffy like a child onto the exam table. Once he got her situated, he made to move away so as to give Buffy and the doctor more space but just as he took his first step back, he felt a light tug on the hem of his shirt and looked down to see Buffy pinching it between the tips of her index and thumb, her mouth twisted into an accusatory pout. _You promised_ , it said. _I wasn’t going to leave_ , he sent back, smoothing a hand along the top of her head, almost offended she’d think he would go back on his word. This exchange, too, did not go unnoticed by Dr. Ndukwe, Rupert was sure, but the doctor gave nothing away when he turned his attention back to her.  

“Alright, so!” she began, zipping back to her workstation where the file she’d brought into the room with her sat.  

“Am I right in assuming that this is your first pregnancy, Buffy?”

“Yeah,” Buffy murmured, practically inaudible. She was back to looking down, her shoulders slumped, black and blue hands nested in her lap. The urge to tick her chin up, to jerk her shoulders back, to hook her up to a nozzle and physically _pump_ some life back into her reared its ugly head for the hundredth time that day, and it was all Rupert could do to smooth a hand up and down the back of Buffy’s head, effectively brushing the bothersome thoughts away. 

“And you’re...” Dr. Ndukwe looked down at her file. “Nineteen? Newly nineteen, it looks like. Your birthday was last month, right? Happy belated!”

“Thank you,” Buffy said in that same small voice. 

Dr. Ndukwe looked up from her file, her expression neither bubbly nor accusatory, but for the first time, plainly serious. 

“It’s more than okay if the answer is no, but since this is your first time at the rodeo, as it were, I do want to be sure I ask whether you have any idea of what to expect from today’s visit?”

Buffy shook her head. Dr. Ndukwe’s face softened.  

“Well, what I’d like to do is start off with a routine pelvic exam--”

“No!” Buffy’s head shot up, her eyes, blown wide and panic-stricken, once again sought Rupert. He brought his hand to curl around her shoulder and she drifted into him. 

“Alright,” Dr. Ndukwe held up her hands, her tone and face softening. “Would you like for your father to leave the room--?” 

“ _No!_ ” Buffy screamed again. Distraught, she turned back to Rupert. Pulling her to him, so that her face was hidden in his cardigan, Rupert sent a nervous look to Dr. Ndukwe, who by now was well past any mood to oblige them. 

“Sorry,” Rupert said fruitlessly, smoothing a hand down Buffy’s head and back. “It’s not just hospitals, she’s skittish about doctors as well, you see.”

He knew he was cooked as soon as his words cleared the air. Dr. Ndukwe snapped her file shut, set down her pen, and stood, arms crossed across her chest. When she spoke, all trace of the chipper, playful woman in the photo had been completely stripped away, replaced by the cutting surgeon’s glare fixed solely on Rupert; but her words, as they’d been before, were for Buffy. 

“I can say what I have to say next with your father in the room, or we can send him out, it’s up to you, Buffy.” 

Buffy gave no indication she’d heard the doctor save for a tiny shake of her head, which was still buried in Rupert’s jumper. Dr. Ndukwe nodded and came  around to Rupert’s side of the table. As the doctor approached them, Rupert shifted Buffy out of his arms so she and the doctor could address one another directly. Buffy went less willingly and more like a ragdoll, sitting hunched over her lap with only Rupert’s grip on her shoulder to keep her from folding in on herself completely. This earned him another withering appraisal from Dr. Ndukwe. 

“Do you know what a mandatory reporter is, Buffy?”

Buffy didn’t respond, not even with a tilt or jerk of the head. Her expression was completely vacant. Growing anxious, Rupert batted away the doctor’s hand as she reached for Buffy’s shoulder and tipped the girl’s chin up so that she was looking at the both of them. 

“Answer the doctor’s question, Buffy,” he said, doing his best to keep the tremor out of his voice. “ _Please_.” 

Buffy didn’t respond at first, her face remaining flat and expressionless, her eyes deadened and glassy. Rupert cupped her cheeks with his hands and brushed his thumbs along the wet corners of her eyes until some semblance of life returned to her. 

“No,” she said finally, and both Rupert and Dr. Ndukwe breathed an audible sigh of relief. He let her go and Buffy instinctively curled back in on herself. 

“A mandatory reporter...” Dr. Ndukwe took a second to pause, perhaps unsure if Buffy was still with them. She sent Rupert a questioning look, to which he returned a small nod for her to proceed, and she began again. 

“A mandatory reporter is someone who, due to the nature of their profession is required by law to file a report with the police if and when we have cause to believe a crime has been committed. Doctors are mandatory reporters. So are teachers and social workers and other people like that.” 

 “I haven’t committed a crime,” Buffy said in a half-vacant voice. 

 “No, Buffy, you haven’t,” Dr. Ndukwe affirmed softly. “But I have reason to believe one has been committed against you.” 

 Buffy said nothing.  

“I need you to tell me the truth,” the doctor continued. “Your hands, the fact that your father has to hold you up when you walk, and that you won’t let me perform an exam on you, it’s not lookin’ good, kiddo, I gotta say.” 

Again, Buffy said nothing. Knowing he would only make matters worse by intervening, Rupert remained silent as well. 

“You don’t have to tell me who it was or even the full extent of your injuries, but as you and your baby’s doctor, I _am_ going to need to know some things in order to provide you both with the best care I can offer. Does that sound fair?”  

Buffy shrugged. 

“Okay.” The doctor took a steadying breath, then said, “Is the baby’s father the person who did this to you?” 

It was rather hypocritical of him, considering his actions a little over a week ago, but Rupert almost snorted at this. If for no other reason than because Buffy wasn’t in any state to do it herself.  

“...You said I didn’t have to tell you who,” she mumbled, still not looking up from her lap.  

Dr. Ndukwe gave her a wry smile. “You’re right, I did. And you don’t. But if he is, Buffy and you’re currently still in a relationship with him, speaking as your doctor, I have to warn you that it doesn’t bode well for you or your baby’s health for you to continue to see him. You might consider--”  

“I don’t know what we are.” Buffy cut her off in that same mumbled voice. “But it wasn’t him who did this to me. H-he’s been helping me.”  

“Is that why he couldn’t be here today?” Dr. Ndukwe probed with a cautious step forward.  

Buffy shrugged.  

The doctor let out a long exhale through her nose. “Alright, this next question is gonna be tough, but again, if I’m going to help you, I need an honest answer, Buffy.” 

“I don’t need you to help me, I just need you to tell me if my baby’s okay,” Buffy said, quietly, but with a familiar petulance that made Rupert proud, in spite of himself.  

“And I will,” Dr. Ndukwe said patiently. “But that requires an honest answer to my next question, clear?” 

Buffy nodded.  

“Buffy, were you sexually assaulted?” 

Rupert tensed. Logically, he knew he’d been expecting this question to come up, but there was a cognitive--no, an empathetic--dissonance, to asking yourself the question in your head, preparing yourself to hear it spoken aloud, and the reality: Especially when you’d done such a good job until this very moment of _not_ thinking about what else those camouflage-clad mongrels could have done to her, the invisible wounds they would have inflicted, the ones you couldn’t get to, couldn’t bandage or disinfect or splint. And so, in a foolish bid for self-preservation, you manage to convince yourself you’d seen the worst of it the night she’d been brought home to you. No need to dig any deeper for a problem you couldn’t fix, a hurt you couldn’t soothe with your hands. 

But there it was, the question Rupert had never been prepared to ask himself; and here he was, already fraying at the seams in anticipation of Buffy’s answer.  

She didn’t give it right away. Without even seeing her face, Rupert knew from the way she huddled even further in on herself this wasn’t out of fear, but deliberation. He set a hand on the doctor’s forearm when he saw her mouth open to repeat the question, mouthing, _Please_. _Give her a moment._

“I’m not…” Buffy broke off, her voice tight and choked. She swallowed once, twice. Then: 

“I’m not sure if it counts.”

Hearing that was somehow worse than if she’d just given a simple “yes,” and Rupert could not for the life of him fathom why. He moved toward Buffy to--to hold her, calm her, gather her up and get her out of here like she’d been wanting this whole time--to _something_ , but this time, Dr. Ndukwe grabbed his forearm, the steady expression on her face repeating his earlier message back to him. 

“They...they would touch me--” 

“‘They?’” Ndukwe, the bloody hypocrite, cut her off. “There was more than one?”

Buffy said nothing. Rupert pinned the doctor with one of her own patented glares, and she clapped a hand over her mouth, realizing what she’d done. 

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt, go on please, Buffy.”

“They would...touch me,” Buffy continued into her lap, as though she hadn’t been interrupted. “I couldn’t stop them, I couldn’t move...I--They put things inside me.” 

She made an awkward gesture with her hands. “Inside _\--down there_ , I mean. I don’t know what, but it _hurt_.” 

“They did this more than once?” Dr. Ndukwe clarified. 

Buffy shrugged. “The first time it was something sharp. Then, later on it was...other stuff. But they didn’t--”  

Her voice cracked as she broke off again. She cleared her throat and whispered, “I don’t know if it counts.” 

“It does,” Rupert heard himself say as soon as he was sure she was finished. Before he could think, his arms were around her again, pulling her to his chest. He felt his jumper dampen from the wetness of her face and brought her closer, his hands stroking along her hair and back. 

“It counts, Buffy,” he said again. “It counts.”  

“Your father’s right,” Dr. Ndukwe added softly, setting a hand on Buffy’s knee. “It does absolutely count. And based on what you told me, Buffy, as your doctor, I have to insist that you let me do a pelvic exam, just to make sure you’re not hurt down there.”  

Buffy shook her head wildly into Rupert’s chest.  

“Please,” she sniffled. “I didn’t come here for that. I just want to know if my baby’s okay.”  

“I understand that, Buffy,” Dr. Ndukwe said carefully. “But I’m not just here for the baby, I’m here for you, too.” 

Buffy shook her head again. “Giles told you, I heal fast. I’ll be okay, just--” 

“‘Giles?’” Dr. Ndukwe repeated.  

She leaned back and folded her arms across her chest. Her head rolled back and she let out another long sigh through her nose. Rupert stiffened. Buffy flipped her head to the other side so she was facing in the opposite direction, away from the doctor’s incriminating glare, thereby passing Rupert the proverbial buck. He held her tighter. Dr. Ndukwe rolled her eyes at both of them.  

“I am so glad you two are my last appointment of the day,” she sighed. That familiar sharp-eyed glare was back and Rupert was again powerless to fight it. But thankfully, it was toned down this time, more playful.  

“Just to clear the air,” she said, jabbing a finger in Rupert’s direction. “You, ‘ _Giles_ ,’ are not Buffy’s actual father.”  

“He’s as good as,” Buffy said, turning her head back and using her actual voice for the first time all day. “He’s better.” 

Impossibly, Rupert’s hold on her at once tensed and slackened. He pulled her closer and leaned down to press his face into her hair for only half a second before pulling away and addressing Dr. Ndukwe.  

“‘Giles’ is my surname,” he told her. “My given name is Rupert.”  

He stuck out his hand for Dr. Ndukwe to shake, which she did, albeit skeptically.  

“Rupert-call-me-Giles,” she said flatly. “Not Buffy’s father, but as good as. Neither are you the baby’s father, I’m guessing? 

“No!” Both he and Buffy said, equally emphatic.  

The doctor seemed to accept that, though her eyes remained narrowed.  

“You’re her...foster father, then?” 

Rupert shifted uncomfortably. “...Well, I suppose, that definition isn’t entirely... _in_ correct...”

Dr. Ndukwe crossed her arms in a huff, looking all for the world tired of this guessing game. But just as her mouth opened to presumably tear Rupert a new one, Buffy pulled away from him and spoke up. 

“He watches me,” she said, her trademark defiance creeping in and out of her with every other word. “I mean, he watches over me...it’s like his job. Except that’s not why he does it anymore…” 

“His job,” Dr. Ndukwe repeated in a disarmingly unskeptical voice. “To watch you.”  

“Uh-huh,” Buffy nodded with that signature head tilt she did whenever she was urging a stranger to buy one of her more unimaginative cover stories. 

Dr. Ndukwe’s head bobbed slowly as she seemed to be considering something. A slow, half-smile peeled its way across her face, and she pinned Rupert with a satisfied look.   

“A watcher, then. That’s what he is.” 

Again, Buffy nodded enthusiastically, apparently unaware of the understanding that had just passed between her Watcher and her doctor. Though, to be fair, Rupert nearly missed it too.

_A watcher, then._  

_A watcher, then._

_A watcher._

_A Watcher._

_That’s what he is._

Rupert’s eyes flicked back to the photograph on the doctor’s desk, for the first time zeroing in on the beaming man with his arm hooked around a young Dr. Ndukwe’s waist, his fist pumped proudly in the air. 

_A Watcher, then. That’s what he is._  

Dr. Ndukwe was still smirking at him when he locked eyes with her again. 

“Yonas Ndukwe,” Rupert said, his face suddenly feeling very numb. 

“My grandfather,” Dr. Ndukwe said smoothly. Then, leaving no time for Rupert to process that or the million other questions running single file from his head to his tongue, the doctor turned back to Buffy--who, through all that had been on pins and needles waiting for the doctor to believe her lie and had therefore missed everything that had happened in between. 

To Buffy, the doctor said, “So we’re a no-go on the pelvic exam then?”

Buffy nodded. “I came here for the baby. Can’t you just do the thing where you put goo on my stomach and show me his heartbeat so Giles and I can get out of here?”

“I can do that,” Dr. Ndukwe agreed easily. “I’d also like to get a blood sample, if you’ll indulge me. That’ll tell me if we can expect any complications during delivery or birth defects.”

Buffy seemed to consider this for a bit, then shook her head. 

“...Okay.” 

“Okay!” Dr. Ndukwe clapped her hands together and bustled over to the other side of the table to switch on one of the monitors, then over to the sink bending down to the cabinets beneath the sink and pulling out what Rupert assumed was a bottle of the aforementioned “goo,” then finally doubled back over to where Buffy was still huddled into Rupert’s chest. 

“If you could lie back for me…” the doctor prompted carefully. 

Rupert felt Buffy tense and spring forward a little. Almost as if, had his body not been there to block her, she would have vaulted herself off that exam table then and there and hobbled her way out of the doctor’s office as fast as she could. In response, he made to steady her, taking her by the shoulders and coaxing her as gently as he could to lie flat. Miraculously—or perhaps worryingly—she went without a fight, slackening in his hold like dead weight as he lowered her to the table, her expression vacant and terrifyingly familiar as her eyes, as her eyes, glassy and limpid and soft with betrayal gleamed up at him the way they had days ago when he’d first suggested she visit a doctor. Heart quickening, Rupert lay a suddenly very sweaty palm across Buffy’s forehead. 

“The gel Dr. Ndukwe’s going to put on your stomach is a mixture made of propylene glycol and water,” he began shakily. Then paused to search Buffy’s unblinking gaze for any sign that she could hear him. She blinked and he continued. “It’s meant to be a conductive medium between the sound waves beneath your skin and the tool she’s going to use to measure them. It isn’t toxic and it won’t hurt when she applies it, but it will feel very, very cold—” He felt Buffy tense again at that. “—But only for it a bit.” 

“Only for a bit,” Dr. Ndukwe echoed, now seated on the other side of the table by the monitor, which was now switched on. She rolled forward on her stool, stopping at Buffy’s head and held up a gray and white device the size and shape of a microphone and said, “This is called a transducer. What I’m going to do with this is run it over the area I apply the gel to. You might feel a little pressure, but it won’t hurt at all, I promise. Plus, it’ll take some of the cold away.”  

At that, they were both gratified to see a tiny uptick in Buffy’s lips. Her eyes remained fixed on Rupert.  

“Can you lift your shirt up for me,” Dr. Ndukwe asked gently.  

Buffy shifted, her right arm rising timidly to pull the hem of her shirt up to reveal most of her midsection. 

“Good, thank you,” the doctor said.  

The gel bottle made an ugly squelching sound as Dr. Ndukwe squirted a handful sized amount of clear gel onto Buffy’s lower abdomen. As expected, the girl went rigid, a tinny, poorly concealed squeal sounding from the back of her throat as the liquid made contact. Rupert didn’t bother to hush her. 

“It’s alright,” he soothed quietly, brushing back a few errant wisps of hair from her steadily clamming brow. “That’s the worst of it. Look.” 

They both watched as the doctor brought the transducer wand down on Buffy’s skin, circling it around a bit in the area around where she’d applied the gel. Then, everyone in the room’s gaze shifted to the screen monitor as a low, rumbling, and blessedly steady _thrum! thrum! thrum!_ began to fill the space around them.

“Look,” Rupert said again, needlessly, as Buffy’s head had turned just so to see the monitor. Although he no longer had clear view of her face, he didn’t need to be looking at her to know she was transfixed. As was he. Though he’d never seen a sonograph before and hadn’t the faintest clue of what to make of the gray and white shadows playing on the screen in front of him, which more resembling a bad Xerox copy than what was supposed to be a human fetus, Rupert nonetheless found himself completely unable to tear his eyes away from it—er, him. 

“Look,” he said, once again brushing the hair back from Buffy’s sweaty scalp. She was shivering now, and remembering this from the last time, Rupert wanted to make sure she was still with him, seeing this. She deserved to see this.  

“There he is, “ he said. Buffy’s whole body shuddered. Her face flushed, and Rupert leaned over her, prepared to take further action if need be. He held his breath as her eyes closed for a long moment. Then released it when they opened and Buffy’s mouth twisted into a concerned frown as her eyes sought Dr. Ndukwe. 

“Do you know already?—I mean, can you tell me if he’s a boy or not?” 

Rupert took her hand then. Her fingers twitched inside his grip as though to wrap around it in thanks. 

“Not yet, sweetheart,” Dr. Ndukwe said contritely. Her expression turned careful again. “Why? Is…is that what the father wants?” 

Buffy turned her head over, breaking contact with the doctor.  

“I don’t know what he wants,” she said. Then, mournfully, whispered, “All I know is that things like this won’t ever happen to him if he’s a boy.”  

The doctor’s face went from solemn to grim. She reached for Buffy as her mouth opened and closed several times before she fully decided against whatever it was she was going to say, opting instead to give Buffy simple pat on the hand, as a strange sort of primordial female Knowing seeming to pass between the two of them in that instant that Rupert was almost gratified to be locked out of. 

“Would you like a video of this?” Dr. Ndukwe asked in that careful tone from earlier. “In case the father wants to see? Or maybe you’d like to watch it again later?” 

“You can do that?” Buffy said with a small spark of excitement.  

“Of course,” the doctor smiled before switching off the monitor.  

She stood and gave her stool a small kick, sending it sliding all the way back under her workstation and followed it as far as the sink to fetch some towels from the dispenser. She wet them and came back over and wiped the remainder of the gel from Buffy’s stomach. 

“Give me about five minutes,” she said, tossing the wad of used towels into the nearest bin and spinning on her heel in the direction of the door. “I’ll be back with that video and some more paperwork too, I’m afraid. Sit tight.” 

This time the door did slam behind her and both Buffy and Rupert jumped at the entirely anticipated _bang_. 

“All done and over with,” Rupert said lamely as he moved to help Buffy sit back up. 

“Mmm,” her head bobbed noncommittally. 

“I’m proud of you.” 

Buffy’s head snapped up and Rupert met her head on, her wide, round eyes, and flushed cheeks, and mouth parted in that painfully familiar _Huh?_ expression she let slip whenever they had one of these moments. As if each time he told her this was some kind of unexpected revelation. 

“I know coming here today wasn’t easy for you, Buffy,” he said soberly. “You were very brave to go through with it.” 

She blushed. “I seriously thought I was gonna throw up a few times back there.”

Rupert sniffed and shoved his hands in his pockets, and with nothing constructive to say to that brave admission, simply said,  

“Yes, well, now that the hard part is over for now if what I remember from when I was a boy is still common practice, now’s the part where we’re to be given lollies then, yes?” 

Buffy grinned. “I don’t know what I’d do without you, Giles.” 

 

 

* * *

 

 

Should Angel ever again sink low enough to take the time—and he knew from past experience that he’d need at least a year or five, give or take—to sift through his memory banks and compile a complete, unabridged list of every single selfish, obscene, ignoble, and all around base act he’d ever committed throughout the course of his near two hundred fifty year existence, the one thing he could say for himself this time around is that his gifting Buffy a claddagh ring wouldn’t even crack the top one thousand. 

There was an imperceptible bit of comfort to be had in a few hundred years of perspective, but only just. After all, Taking The Big Picture Into Account did very little to soothe the double kidney-punch of guilt and self-disgust the recollection of the moment he’d presented Buffy with that ring never failed to leave Angel with. 

God, he’d been so stupid then--and selfish, and naive, and foolhardy. And that was saying something. 

But here’s something else: when Angel does have the time—and he always, _always_ has time for this, even when he knows he shouldn’t (which is always)—to lose himself in those most guarded memories kept sacred and buried in the deepest pits of his soul: Of the early months of his and Buffy’s relationship, of how happy they’d both been back then (how new, how free, how bold and audacious and _young_ and _wanting_ ; how hungry)—He can see himself making the exact same mistake all over again. Knowingly. Even with the benefit of hindsight and perspective playing out in front of his eyes like a movie screen, showing him exactly how things would turn out were he to still choose to go down that road. Angel knew, given the chance to go back and do things right, he would still find himself on the day of Buffy’s birthday with a custom made Irish wedding ring burning a hole in his pocket, waiting for just the right moment to present it to her. (So maybe this meant he was wrong about that list after all. If he could say with abject certainty, even without having to go through and catalogue them, that he would take back everything on that list from top to bottom except The Claddagh Incident, then maybe it should be at the top) Not because he’s a lovelorn masochist—although, when you got down to it, that did have a lot to do with it—but because, in spite of himself, he’s a _hopeful_ lovelorn masochist, particularly where Buffy is concerned.   

This, Angel doesn’t think he can be faulted for. It was impossible not to be blinded by hopefulness when it came to the one who gave you back your hope in the first place. 

To that end, the claddagh hadn’t been a promise for the future in the traditional sense, so much as it had been the promise _of_ a future—for Angel as well as for Angel and Buffy. It had been intended to symbolize the culmination of everything those incredible months of their relationship had been to him; the rebirth of a new person, a Someone, a man who couldn’t yet be called good, but who was doing his damnedest to be because of the girl whose light had given him the courage to try. Without even knowing it, Buffy had given him everything; a purpose, a connection, a place in the world, a chance to make something of himself: Finally--after nearly a century of slogging through the sewer pits of his own private Gehenna-on-Earth, aimless and anonymous even amongst his fellow gutter-swine—Angel had reached the shores of Paradise and her name was Buffy. 

It was more than he ever could have hoped for during those decades he’d spent as a craven, rodent hunting wretch. But of course, being himself, Angel had had to have more. It wasn’t enough that, due in no small part to the introduction of the Slayer into his miserable life, he’d managed to pull himself out of the sewers, carve out a life for himself, and on top of all that, earn the love of his heart’s desire. No, it wasn’t enough to have it, he’d had to declare it: No matter that only he would know his true intention. It was a hard-won victory he was still winning every day, it didn’t need to be celebrated so much as stated: _I’ve become Someone. I’m_ your _someone for as long as you’ll have me, and I hope to God that’ll be forever._

Idiot. 

He’d been such an idiot; to the point that even going to Hell and back hadn’t been able to drill into his head that Buffy didn’t deserve a Someone, she deserved a Someone Like Her: A lover she could build a life with, not around; who could grow old with her, not watch her grow old; a lover as selfless, and kind, and innocent, and strong-hearted, and Good as she; a lover she could be proud of. 

It had taken him nearly killing her to save his own worthless, moldering flesh for Joyce’s—And Darla’s, and the Mayor’s, and Giles’, and that idiot Xander’s—point to hammer through his thick skull. (And the knowledge of this, coupled with the fact that even with it, he still would go through with giving Buffy the Claddagh, meant that he’d definitely have to bump that moment up a few more spots on his list.) 

They were right. They’d all been right. And he’d been so, so, so very wrong from the start; to run away with the hope, the yearning, the long forbidden wish that, as bad as Angel was for her, he and Buffy could still build something resembling a life together. That love alone would be enough to see them through. 

Idiot. He was such a stupid, hateful, good-for-nothing lout. It seemed no matter how far he ran from him, that drunken wastrel from Galway was never far behind. Even so, Angel had tried to make it right. Broken things off with Buffy, and broken both of their hearts in the process, but it had been for the best. It had been _right_. Finally, he was doing _right_. Or so he’d thought. So he still thought. Was still trying to make himself think, anyway. 

_The Powers mean for you to take this as a gift,_ the female Oracle had said. But a gift in terms of what? One he should fall to his knees and thank God, and the universe, and the Powers, and whoever else for every evening when he woke, while Buffy raised their child four hours away on an active Hellmouth? That, he could live with. Even if he never saw Buffy or the child again after she returned home—whenever that would be—just knowing that they were out there—living, breathing, growing, loving—their child, his and Buffy’s. His. Hers’, that the two of them made, the one good thing Angel had ever managed to even halfway create on his own. Just knowing that they were out there somewhere, alive and—if the Powers were merciful—taking after their mother, that would be enough. Angel could live with that. Would prefer to live with that as opposed to even considering the alternative. He was intimately familiar with the type of longing brought on by exploring the alternate explanation of the Powers’ “gift.” —(Going to bed beside Buffy every morning. Rocking their child in his arms. Seeing their first smile, their first steps, their first laugh. Reading them and Buffy to sleep with _The Canterbury Tales_ in the original Latin. Surprising the two of them with Mickey Mouse pancakes in the morning, just because. Raising a child and defending the world at Buffy’s side, her partner in all things as he’s dreamt of being from the moment he laid eyes on her)—Unbridled and cloying and driven to the brink of ruin by savage temptation, the last thing those dreams needed was permission…  

“Angel,” Wesley’s voice calling from the landing of the stairs leading up to his office jerked Angel abruptly from his thoughts. “There’s a gentlemen up here in the lobby who says he’s here to see Buffy. What shall I tell him? I don’t think he’s keen to come back at another time.”  

“Give me a second,” Angel heard himself say absently, as he deftly maneuvered the ring pinched between his thumb and index out of sight and into his palm, clamping his fist around it. “I’ll be right there.” 

With a quick nod, Wesley turned and bounded back up the stairs. Angel sighed and uncalled his fist, and after one last careful look at the ring, pulled open the bottom drawer of his nightstand and fetched the tiny black velvet bag from inside. He dropped the ring into the bag to join its mate and then set it back inside the drawer before heading for the stairs to join Wesley, Cordy, and their new visitor upstairs. 

 

 

* * *

 

 

Unorthodox though she may be, Dr. Ndukwe was not in the practice of keeping sweets on hand, as it turned out, much to Rupert and Buffy’s mutual dismay.

_“Honestly, that’s more of a pediatrician thing. But I’ll tell you what, I still have some homemade dried kale chips left over from lunch if you’re interested?”_

That offer, though tempting, was swiftly (Buffy) yet politely (Rupert) declined, but lack of sweets aside, they did not leave the office empty-handed (Metaphorically speaking on Buffy’s part, of course). When she’d come bustling back into the exam room with the promised video as well as some additional paperwork for Rupert to complete on Buffy’s behalf, Dr. Ndukwe had had with her a thick folder with the Women for Women Obstetrics logo emblazoned across it. Inside were several pamphlets and information packets on everything from Bottle vs. Breastfeeding, to advice on combatting morning sickness, to ‘Why Home Births Are Back In Vogue,’ and finally, ‘A Guide to Choosing The Right Midwife.’

“These, I definitely want you to go through before our next appointment,” Dr. Ndukwe had said, pulling out the pamphlets on midwives and home births to show Buffy. “Normally it would be me who would deliver your baby at St. Francis’, the hospital our practice is affiliated with, but since you aren’t a fan of hospitals I thought this might be something worth looking into for you.”

They both thanked the doctor profusely for all her help and for being so understanding of their unique circumstances and, after scheduling Buffy’s follow up appointment with Indra at the front desk, made their way out to the parking lot to head back to Angel’s. 

The slight pit stop they’d made on the way had been a surprise to both of them. It wasn’t that either he or Buffy were really all that put out by the lack of post-appointment treats, they were both adults after all. The minor disappointment didn’t warrant a twenty minute detour to Target’s candy aisle, but—well—it wasn’t exactly a feeling Rupert could put into words so much as it was the whole experience: Everything that had come before today, then the day itself. Buffy drawing further and further into herself the closer they got to the doctor’s office, fighting through her own terror to make sure her child received the best of care, starting in on the literature they’d received from Dr. Ndukwe the minute he’d gotten her settled into the passenger’s seat. It wasn’t pride Rupert felt for his charge so much as it was admiration, or perhaps guilt—that he hadn’t done more, _been_ more to stop this from happening in the first place—or perhaps it was secondhand exhaustion, sympathy fatigue, as he once again let it sink in for the millionth time since learning of Buffy’s condition, of just how much she had been through and of just how muchshe still had left to bear. Or perhaps it was simultaneously all and none of that; merely the sense that, if she deserved nothing else, Rupert’s Slayer would at the very least have a bottomless supply of ice cream and peanut butter cups to get her through it all. 

“Sheesh, Giles, did you buy the whole store?” Buffy said, eyes bulging, as she twisted around in her seat to watch him load the bags into the backseat. 

“Just about,” he said, then shut the door and came around to the driver’s seat. “I suspect they’ll have to name an aisle after me now that I’ve spent half my teacher’s pension in that blasted place.”

Feeling eyes on him all of the sudden, he paused as he stuck the key into the ignition and looked over at Buffy who was now facing forward. The teasing smirk she’d been wearing only seconds before had dwindled away to something small and frighteningly vulnerable.

“I didn’t know you had such a big thing for Reeses Cups and Three Musketeers,” she said in a small voice.

Rupert shifted in his seat, facing forward now as well. He turned the key in the ignition.

“I don’t.”

There was a long, uncomfortable silence broken only by the hum of the engine. Rupert snuck a look at Buffy just in time to see her head snap forward again. She bit her lip.

“You didn’t have to do that.”

Rupert found his eyes drifting over to the bullseye in the Target logo just outside his peripheral. He hummed. 

“I know.”

Without moving an inch, Buffy sought his face from the corner of her eye. “Did you get ice cream too?”

He flinched, now unsure, he turned to her.

“Cookie-dough fudge mint chip is still your favorite, right?”

Again, her eyes bugged in surprise, but only for a second before she schooled herself again and nodded.

“They also had some gruesome concoction called ‘Funfetti Cake Batter,’ I thought you might like that as well.”

His hand moved for the gear shift just as Buffy’s landed on his wrist. “Giles, I-I—” 

“Just promise me you’ll start brushing three times a day now instead of only two, in addition to taking those prenatal vitamins Dr. Ndukwe prescribed. I read that pregnancy can take a toll on the body’s calcium levels and I’ll not have you in dentures before you hit your twenties.” 

Buffy’s fingers twitched around his hand in her best attempt at squeezing it. Beaming over at him, she said, “Deal.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

They barely made it off the lift before Angel pounced.

“Buffy,” he huffed, in a tone so choked and flustered it made Rupert fear, albeit briefly, that the vampire was having a panic attack. Remembering himself, Rupert sent Angel a questioning look, which the other ignored as he took Buffy by the shoulders only to waffle for a moment between pushing her back into the lift and crushing her to his chest as though to shield her. 

Losing patience, Rupert went to intervene again. “Angel, what the devil is—”

“Buffy, I just wanna—” the vampire rushed out, still ignoring Rupert completely. “There’s, uh, something you should know before you—That is, um—”

Buffy, like Rupert, cross with Angel’s strange behavior, pulled away and urged him back. “Angel what’s your dam—”

“Buffy?”

A new voice, a man’s voice, called out from behind Angel. 

The vampire’s head snapped behind him then forward again as he appeared to have made up his mind from earlier and made to guide Buffy back into the lift. But it was too late, Buffy and the stranger had seen each other. 

“…Daddy?”

Oh, bugger it.

Buffy side-stepped Angel, who was now frozen in defeat, and started slowly toward the man standing just outside Angel’s office. 

Hank Summers was an impossibly unremarkable man, it was no wonder he hadn’t stood out from behind Angel’s admittedly very broad back. In his rumpled, off-white, “Between Secretaries and Functionally Helpless” Oxford button down, his “Spends More Time In Hotel Rooms Than In His Big, Empty House” khaki pants, and his scuffed, “Missed My Daughter’s Birthday Three Years in a Row” Italian loafers, Summers was the very picture of the common beast known as the white-collar American salaryman. He blended seamlessly into the background of Angel’s office, to the point of being almost invisible amongst the hanging plants and file cabinets. Rupert’s lip curled in distaste as he watched this…poor man’s Gordon Gekko sweep Buffy into a crushing embrace, his arms wrapping around her back and _squeezing_ in the exact places Rupert had found contusions the size of his hand only a week ago. He seethed, sick with something too layered to put a name to, and having to summon all of his training to keep from tearing that imbecile’s arms from their sockets.

“Oh, honey,” Summers half-wept, tone thick like melted plastic. Rupert noticed his eyes were tellingly dry when he back to hold Buffy up by her forearms. “I just got word about what’d happened today. I flew in from Bali this morning and came home to this crazy message from your mother on my machine, and—”

He cut himself off as both he and Rupert noticed Buffy’s legs beginning to wobble.

“—Shit—I mean, _shoot!_ I forgot, your mother said you were still a little banged up, I—” His attention turned to Rupert and Angel, who were both still over by the lift. “—Can one of you…”

He made a summoning motion with his hands and poor Angel darted forward, gesturing clumsily to the open doorway ahead of them.

“Yes, of course, um, my office is right there, so we can, uh, just—”

Ignoring Angel’s stammering, Summers did an about-face and led the way back into the office, shuffling Buffy along while Rupert and Angel followed behind.

The first thing Rupert noticed upon entering the room was the American-sized floral arrangement sitting on the center of Angel’s desk. It was an overly-pink monstrosity in a clear, freckled vase bound by a large white bow. Inside the bed of flowers lay a card in a magenta colored envelope on which Buffy’s name was printed in a scrawl Rupert hoped was meant to appear “artfully” rushed. With nothing else to do with his hands while Summers settled Buffy into a chair and Angel hovered in the doorway like a jilted prom date, Rupert set the four Target bags he’d carried in with him on Angel’s desk; right next to where the three-foot-tall red and white stuffed bear sat drooping into the flowers.

That, apparently, was enough to draw Summers’ attention. Coming back to stand beside Angel, Rupert watched Summers watch him, baleful, as the other man’s eyes narrowed and perused for several uncomfortable seconds before they alighted in recognition.

“You must be Rupert Giles,” he said, slapping on his hoover salesman smile and offering his hand for Rupert to shake. “Hank Summers. Joyce has told me so much about you. From what I hear you were a real big help getting this one—” He jerked a thumb back at Buffy, whose head was bowed and turned away from them all. “—To straighten up her act in school. To hear Joyce tell it, Buffy’s high school diploma might as well have your name on it.” 

He chuckled lightly at his own joke, seemingly unaware that he was the only one laughing. Rupert bit back a scowl and removed his glasses, bringing them down to clean with the hem of his undershirt. Beside him, Angel bristled.

“Yes, well,” Rupert said in his best High School Librarian voice. “Buffy is nothing if not a tireless worker, and that’s on top of possessing a keen mind and a remarkable ability to excel at any subject she’s tasked with mastering. You and Joyce should be very proud.”

Summers hummed in vague approval and then abruptly switched gears. 

“Joyce didn’t say you’d be here today when she and I spoke earlier,” he said, question implicit, the man’s inner blood-sniffing corporate snake rising to the surface. Rupert, to his credit, didn’t flinch. 

“Joyce and I, er, haven’t been in touch much in the last week or so.”

Which was true. In addition to all the research he’d tasked himself with in preparation for today, he’d made a conscious effort to avoid Joyce following his return from Los Angeles, in deference to Buffy’s request that he keep the visit’s major revelation from her mother for the time being. It wasn’t so much that Rupert feared he’d have any difficulty keeping the truth from Joyce, but rather that he respected the woman far too much to lie to her face, even by omission. 

“Really?” Hank said, suspicion edging into his voice. “But according to Joyce, you’ve been her rock all throughout this whole thing. You—and _him_ —” he gestured somewhat awkwardly at Angel. “Were instrumental in getting Buffy back to us.” 

“Well…yes,” said Rupert, floundering a bit at the man’s use of ‘us.’ “But as you can see, Buffy’s been returned safe and sound, so there’s really no need for Joyce and I to be in such close contact these days.”

A lie. Having to give Buffy up so soon after only just getting her daughter back in her arms had left Joyce wrung out and ragged. She had been on pins and needles all throughout those first few Hellish days where they’d been waiting for word from Angel on whether Buffy had woken up and what her status was. To think, in all that time, Hank Summers was somewhere on a beach in Indonesia wheeling and dealing over Mai-Tais and fruits of the sea; Rupert had never been more keen to physically eviscerate anyone in his life.

“Safe and sound,” Mr. Summers agreed, stretching his arm behind him to send exactly four absentminded pats to the top of Buffy’s head. “But what I’m having trouble sussing out, Mr. Giles, is why, when I came to see my recently abducted teenage daughter at her ex-boyfriend’s apartment, where she’s been sent to stay at your behest, I’m told by said ex-boyfriend’s secretary that she’s out with you at a doctor’s appointment. Which,” He broke off and turned behind him to pluck something out of Buffy’s lap then slapped it on the desk for Rupert and Angel to see, and _Oh bugger, bugger, bugger—_ “I’m only now given to realize was at a place called “Women for Women Obstetrics?”

The folder. The thrice damned, blasted folder that Buffy had had in her lap the entire ride back, reading aloud from the pamphlet on prenatal nutrition as they traded snide commentary about the virtues of kale and tofu stir fry and whole grain steel cut oatmeal. That double-buggered folder that Buffy insisted on carrying herself, clasped to her chest beneath her crisscrossed arms. Summers must have spotted it instantly the second Buffy stepped out from behind Angel. Fuck. Fuck. Bloody, buggering fuck.

“Daddy…” Buffy whimpered, swiveling around in her seat to turn watery, beseeching eyes onto her father’s back. “Daddy, please, you can’t tell Mom. Say you won’t, _please_.”

“Sweetheart,” Her father’s demeanor softened as he bent down on his knees. Tone thick and supine, he tipped Buffy’s chin down to look at him. “Buffy, sweetie, tell Daddy the truth.”

He leaned in closer, perhaps so as to give himself and Buffy more privacy. Unfortunately for them all, he was a terrible whisperer.

“Did the people who took you do this to you?”

Angel’s sharp intake of breath was excessive to the point of melodrama, but oddly, that didn’t stop Rupert from reaching out to pat his forearm in sympathy. _Steady_ , he tried to telegraph, lest Angel’s understandable indignation land them all in even deeper lukewarm water. Naturally, Rupert’s hopes went tits up with Buffy’s answer. 

Her neck lifted and Summers followed her gaze over his head to where Angel stood straddling the limbo between his office and the outer room. Buffy’s lips parted to release an audibly wet breath; she rolled her shoulders back, steeling herself. Bearing witness to this made Rupert’s heart full to bursting, though whether it was with pride or the suppressed need to sew her mouth shut, he couldn’t say.

“…No,” Buffy whispered. Then, a few octaves higher, “Don’t tell Mom, Daddy. _Please, please say you won’t tell Mom.”_

Rupert removed his glasses as Angel stepped forward into the room, presumably to proceed with damage control. Buffy let her head hang again while Summers, the feckless twit, covered his face with both hands and began to laugh.

“God, Joyce,” he groaned between peals of bitter laughter. “What in the Hell did you send me into.”

“Mr. Summers—” Angel got exactly two words and two steps into his speech before Hank Summers, in all his khaki-clad glory shot him down with a wave of his mediocre hand. 

“I think you’ve done enough here, don’t you.” Summers then turned to Rupert. “And you! What, did you think you were just going to cover this up? Hm? Just sneak Buffy out of town to her boyfriend’s dingy little love nest—” 

“Now hold on a minute—”

“Daddy, please—” 

“—I mean, you’re a man who makes his living working with high school kids, how can you call yourself an educator, pulling stunts like this?”

“Well I can’t anymore,” Rupert said cooly. “Seeing as the school where I was employed was blown up at the end of last term, or didn’t you hear?”

Summers apparently elected to let that one fly over his head, in favor of the more pressing matter at hand. 

“What was this appointment today about anyway? For both their sakes I hope it was to get rid of it!”

Incensed, Angel bared his teeth. Hoping to draw Summers’ attention away from the vampire currently hedging his bets on how hard it would be for him to convince his lover to forgive him for opening her deadbeat father’s throat with his teeth, Rupert stepped forward to explain, only to be cut off by— 

_“Daddy, please just listen!”_

Buffy was sitting up in her seat, back straight, face flushed, brows drawn but determined. Rocking back on his heels, Summers crossed his arms and glared down at his daughter.

“Alright, Buffy, I’m listening. What’s your plan here? Does this mean you’re keeping it—?”

“He’s not a—” 

“What about you and this—” He gestured contemptuously at Angel. “Person, here. Your mother said the two of you aren’t even together anymore, is that gonna change anytime soon? He must have known about this before your teacher sent you off to stay with him and you weren’t together then, so what happens now? Are you prepared to raise a child on your own, if it comes to that? How’s that gonna work? What about school? You finally get your grades together enough to get into a good college and then you drop out to have a baby before your freshman year’s even over? How do you think that’s gonna look? Where’re you gonna live? What kind of job are you gonna get with barely a high school diploma from a school that doesn’t even exist anymore? Does he even have a job? Has he said how he’s gonna help support you—?”

“Okay, _enough!”_ Angel roared, storming over and grabbing Summers by the collar before regaining control of himself and letting his grip lessen just enough for Summers to pull himself free. But Angel was finished allowing himself to be batted about by a man he held a good six inches and two hundred years over.

“I get that you’re overwhelmed at the situation, Mr. Summers,” he said tersely, barely reigning in his true face. “But railroading Buffy isn’t going to make the situation better. She’s been through a lot, we all have, and we’re all still figuring this whole thing out. So if we could just—”

“‘ _We’_ wouldn’t be in this mess right now if you’d remembered to wear a raincoat, Romeo,” Summers snapped, raking a hand through his hair with a put-upon sigh. “God, this is exactly what Joyce was afraid of, Buffy finally getting it together only for another curveball to come along and send her all out of whack again. She said you agreed last year when she told you to hit the road, why the Hell couldn’t you have just stayed gone?”

The whole room froze, save for Summers, who spent a few painful seconds waiting for Angel’s retort before belatedly reading the mood shift. Rupert was torn between laughter and pity for Summers as he watched the realization slowly dawn on the man’s face, that as far as the room’s other two occupants were concerned, he’d all but gone invisible. But schadenfreude quickly soured to sadness, then sympathy, as Rupert watched his poor charge’s doe-eyed face crumple.

“A-Angel,” she whispered. “What my dad said...did it mean what I think it did?”

A pained look crossed Angel’s face as he took a step toward her.

“Buffy, you gotta understand—” 

“No!” she shrieked with a hard twist of her head, shaking Angel off before he could even reach her. Wild-eyed and quivering, she found Rupert next. He shook his head once, not daring to involve himself any further into this mess until the time was right. Angel tried again. 

“Buffy, when your mom came to see me—”

“Right around prom,” Buffy said, more to herself than to anyone else in the room. “I _knew_ something had happened, everything was fine before—”

“Everything wasn’t fine,” Angel said desperately, on his knees in front of her now. He reached for her hands, but Buffy kept them clasped around her chest, as though to embrace herself. Angel pressed on. “Buffy, things were far from fine. We were just kidding ourselves and it took your mother to make me see—”

“How can you say that to me?!” Buffy shouted. “After everything—?”

 _“Oh, for God’s sake, Buffy grow the Hell up!”_  

Summers heaved, nearly as red as his daughter he loomed over her and a still kneeling Angel, looking about ready to knock both their heads together. Buffy gaped up at her father, hurt, shock, and indignation blanking out her face and rendering her mute. Angel was stock-still with murderous intent and now, after the man’s latest outburst, Rupert was of no mind to put a stop to whatever action the vampire took in reprisal. Summers, though, remained thuggishly unaware of the danger his mouth was putting him in.

He shook his head to himself. “God, I can’t believe this. Ever since you started high school it’s like a roller coaster with you, up and down, up and down, and just when we think you’ve leveled out, you hit another corkscrew.”

Buffy continued to gape while Angel reared himself up to his full height, but Summers wasn’t finished.

“Just answer me one thing, Buffy; have you given any thought to what’s going to happen in nine months? Any at all?” He didn’t wait to hear Buffy’s answer before steamrolling over her again. “And what’s this about me not telling your mother? Of all the childish—You mean you’ve been running around town pregnant all this time without your mother knowing? God, Buffy _wake up!_ Get your head in the game. This isn’t high school anymore, kiddo, this is real life here. You’re having a baby, do you even understand what that means?!”

“Do you?”

The question was in Rupert’s head and on his tongue and out in the ether before he could catch himself, but now there it was and Oh, if only he’d said it sooner.

“Excuse me,” Summers said lowly. 

“Sorry, did you not understand the question?” said Rupert, unfazed as Summers slowly stalked toward him. He waited until he and the other man were face to face before he spoke again.

“Now granted, I don’t know much about Buffy’s early childhood prior to her move to Sunnydale, but I was there to help her make a successful transition to a new school setting. I stayed at work late almost every night so that the library could remain open for Buffy and her friends study groups sessions. In fact, while we’re on the subject, I happen to know Buffy’s two best friends in the world quite well, Mr. Summers, and if you can tell me either of their names I’ll wire you every red cent in my bank account.”

Summers paled. “Now hold on a minute—”

“Buffy caught the flu her junior year and had to be hospitalized for three days, and I don’t remember you eversending so much as a fruit basket. She scored a 1430 on her SATs the first time she took them, can you name three of the schools—besides UC Sunnydale—that those scores got her into, Mr. Summers? Do you know who took her to Homecoming senior year?”

“Alright, Mr. Giles, you’ve made your point—”

“No, Mr. Summers, I don’t think I have,” Rupert said, going in for the jugular. “Tell me, when Buffy ran away the summer between her junior and senior year—the summer she was supposed to spend with you, if you’ll recall—were you sunning on a beach in Bali then, as well? Or, perhaps Barcelona, I hear it’s lovely that time of year. Perfect place to escape calls from your frantic ex-wife telling you your daughter’s gone missing. I guess we should be grateful you bothered to return them this time.”

“Like I said,” Summers seethed, face pocked and pink with some dreadful combination of shame and fury. “I get it. You made your point…”

“A hundred of you stacked atop one another like bricks wouldn’t measure up to half the person your daughter is, Mr. Summers.” Rupert stepped aside, clearing a path to the outer office. He motioned to the lift. “I think I speak for everyone in this room when I say you can see yourself out.”

Summers didn’t need to be told twice. With barely a backward glance at Buffy, he beat a hasty retreat to the elevator. Rupert watched him go, until a thought occurred to him and he hastened to catch up with Summers before the lift arrived. He caught the man’s arm just as he was stepping into the carriage and yanked him around so that they were once again eye to eye.

“You’ll respect Buffy’s wishes and not breathe a word of any of this to Joyce,” Rupert hissed menacingly.

 Summers’ eyes narrowed. “She asked me to check up on her,” he said, as though that meant anything.

“And so you did. As far as Joyce need know, all is as well as it could be under the circumstances.”

“You can’t mean to let Buffy go on hiding this forever.”

Rupert didn’t even bother rolling his eyes: This man, honestly. “If you really think that’s how Buffy is going to let this pan out, you don’t really know your daughter at all.”

Summers said nothing for a moment, his gaze going beyond Rupert’s back into the office just behind them.

“Yeah,” he said. “I guess you’re right…” 

He stuck out his hand again for Rupert to shake, then quickly thought better of it and stepped into the lift. He offered Rupert a small half-wave as the doors of the lift closed around him and the lift carriage went down. 

Angel was alone in the office by the time Rupert returned. Reclined all the way back in the chair behind the desk, his head lolling about on the edge of the backrest, he barely acknowledged Rupert when he entered the room again.

“Where’s Buffy?”

Angel’s head twitched. “She went downstairs to lay down.”

“By herself?”

“She wouldn’t let me help her.”

With a heavy sigh, Rupert let himself drop right into the chair on the opposite side of the desk, the one Buffy had previously vacated.

After a beat, he said, “Summers wasn’t all wrong, you know. _You_ , at least, do need to do some growing up.”

Done with the need for pretense, Angel let a low, animalistic growl sound from his throat.

“Don’t take that tone,” Rupert said, only half-joking. “The two of you have quite a bit to discuss over the next couple of months, and there’s no time like the present to begin.”

Gathering up the Target bags from earlier, he found the folder from the doctor’s office right where Summers had left it and with a prompting look Angel was skillfully avoiding, slid it over to him. He could at least be productive while he brooded over the girl downstairs.

Speaking of which…

Rupert found Buffy at the landing of the stairs, flushed and panting, propped up against the wall, her legs splayed out in front of her.

“Kitchen or bedroom,” he asked, shifting all the bags to one hand and helping her to her feet, then hooking his free hand around her waist for added support.

“Kitchen,” she said numbly.

Rupert obliged, bringing her into the kitchen, setting her down in one chair, himself in the one across, and the four shopping bags on the floor beside him. And then, there was silence.

Buffy slouched forward in her seat, staring new grooves into Angel’s weatherbeaten thrift store kitchen table. Unable to bear Buffy’s hanging head for one more solitary second, Rupert slumped back against the seat he was in, copying Angel’s position from earlier and letting his head roll back against the back end of the chair. Absently, he dug into one of the bags at his feet and tore open a random bag of candy. Pulling out a handful, he dropped them onto the center of the table, then took one for himself, unwrapped it, and popped it in his mouth.

“Can you hand me the ice cream?”

Rupert looked over at Buffy, arms folded across her chest, the defeated hunch in her shoulders lessened by only that much.

“Where does Angel keep his spoons?”

“Drawer to the left of the stove.”

Rupert rooted around in each of the shopping bags until he found the gallon of cookie dough fudge mint chip. Then, with it in hand, made his way over to the aforementioned silverware drawer and chose a spoon. He tore a sheet of paper towel off the roll next to the stove and set it down in front of Buffy. He set the tub of ice cream down on the paper towel placemat, removed the lid from the carton and handed her her spoon.

“I think this is one of the rare occasions where foregoing the use of a bowl is entirely warranted,” he smiled, more for her benefit than his own.

Buffy didn’t return it, but her head bobbed over her tub of ice cream in woeful acknowledgment. Rupert brushed a hand through her hair one last time, then returned to his seat across from her. Fishing another fistful of candy from the open bag with the sincere hope that he’d have something more constructive to offer her by the time he unwrapped the last KitKat.

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for sticking with this story. I promise there will be much more shippy stuff between Buffy and Angel in the coming chapters. 
> 
> As always, your kudos and comments keep me going. I really cannot tell you all how much I look forward to reading your feedback after every update. I can't wait to see what you guys think of this one <33

**Author's Note:**

> I don't even know what this is, tbh. I blame the Passion of the Nerd on Youtube for getting me back into Buffy with his videos, and I also blame ImperialVader on Tumblr for letting me convince myself that writing a fic for a mostly dormant fandom was a good idea. So....HERE IT IS, GUYS!! Hope you didn't hate it, at least. 
> 
> Here's the thing, it's always bothered me how, in the show, Buffy's never really given any time or space to deal with any of the really traumatic shit that happens to her. There's always some emergency that takes precedence over her mental/emotional health and recovery. So I kind of set out to write a fic where the exact opposite happens. Where Buffy's loved ones give her the gift of time to get herself back together after the unthinkable happens to her. 
> 
> In addition to the above, I've always wanted to do a "Buffy Gets Pregnant After IWRY" AU. Yeah, I know they've been done to death, but I was only JUST learning how to read when the fandom was in its heyday, fuckin' sue me. 
> 
>  
> 
> Please, please comment, it would mean the world to me.


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